“We expect to grow by 50 per cent in 2021”

New Delhi based Abdos Labtech is a manufacturer of high quality lifesciences laboratory products. Established in 2009, the company has been prototyping, designing, developing and manufacturing high quality laboratory products for use in life sciences laboratories around the world. In addition to plastics, Abdos also markets large variety of bench top instruments and products for safety & utilities for use in the laboratory. The company has recently completed 10 years of its existence, following which BioSpectrum had a detailed interaction with Shrey Agarwal, Chief Executive Officer & Director, Abdos Labtech, New Delhi.

Edited excerpts-

Congratulations to Abdos for completing 10 years. How has been the journey so far?

We are very thankful to the life sciences community to make Abdos journey a great success in the last 10 years. With our 50 years of manufacturing background in different fields we ventured into the life sciences space. We started our manufacturing unit in Roorkee with our corporate office in New Delhi. Starting with few products and now we have close to 1800 products. Abdos lifesciences was started with a sense of purpose for “Creating Products and Services for Lifesciences” but that has expanded to “Ensuring, Empowering Health & Hygiene for People” in the recent past. We were supplying in few cities in India and now we have customer coverage in over 65 countries together with our logistics subsidiary in Europe based out of Netherlands. From few machines to South East Asia’ s largest cleanroom facility for plastic laboratory products; from a few people to about 250 people now in our company. The journey has been very interesting and full of events but overall quite satisfied with where we are in 10 years.

What were the key highlights at Abdos Labtech in 2020?

We began 2020 with key success stories in the international business with agreements in South Korea and Japan. Then the pandemic hit India in March and everything changed as the lockdown started and the need for testing Covid-19!!!. 

During the pandemic in 2020 no team member of Abdos were laid off or fired. We supported our team in the pandemic, additionally we hired over 65 more team members in our company. We did a lot of CSR activities in terms of distribution of PPE kits to medical centres and hospitals, distributing food packets and contributing large sums in the PMCARE fund. 

We expanded our market share in diagnostics and healthcare space. We also won some WHO (World Health Organization) contracts for few of our products and services. We built more than 100 million Filter Tips for COVID-19 testing. We supported leading kit manufacturers in their R&D, kit manufacturing and VTM Kits. We increased our marketing reach via digital platforms through our Mobile App, Website and Virtual meetings with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. I urge everyone in the scientific community to download our fully featured Mobile App which is informative, creative and fun filled.

 Abdos fully recognizes the vision of our honourable Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi in “Make in INDIA” & “Atmanirbhar Bharat”. Abdos lifesciences and Abdos group strives in that direction with 7 world class manufacturing facility and employs over 2500 people. We do export in over 65 countries and bring foreign exchange revenues to India. We will also be among top 5 Indian manufacturers in the plastic life sciences space, contributing richly in reducing the dependency on imported goods in making India self-reliant and Atmanirbhar.

Did the company launch any new products this year? If yes, what was the R&D expenditure?

We launched 25 new products with three new product lines. Some of the key products we added are Trace Metal Free (TMF) Centrifuge Tubes, Screw Cap tubes, Biofiltration products, and new range of Biopharma related lab consumables. Due to the huge demand for RT PCR tests we launched PCR workstations also. All of the new products saw tremendous response from our consumers both in India and globally. We invested $7 million USD in our expansion at the end of 2019. The demand kept on increasing and thus we invested $5 million USD again in Q2 2020 to keep up with the required demand to serve our customers.

How much revenue was generated during the FY19-20? How much growth is expected in FY20-21?

In the year 2019-20 we were doing relatively well and we were hoping to close the year with a growth of 25 percent, unfortunately covid-19 hit us and India went into a lockdown in the last 15 days of March so we could grow by only 15 percent. In 2020-21 due to the need of testing, research, vaccine and diagnostic kit manufacturing the demand of our products has hit record peaks and therefore we expect to grow by 50 percent in 2020-21.

What are the major plans in store for 2021?

If the demand continues in the same fashion, we again continue to expand our manufacturing capabilities in year 2021. We are adding major manufacturing lines in the liquid handling products. In 2021 we will launch about 10 new product lines in Cryo Techniques, Storage Techniques and Bio Pharma range to cope up with the demand for vaccine manufacturing globally. I believe that in the second half of 2021 we could see the case count of Covid-19 ease and the need for testing could reduce slightly. We expect to grow every year by 25 percent in the Indian market and 40 percent in the international market in the next 3-5 years which we expect through our routine business in Academic, Pharmaceutical, Health and Applied.

How has been your service during the ongoing pandemic situation?

I am very glad to say that, even in this pandemic situation where there is major disruption in supply chain our commercial and logistics team have done a phenomenal job and ensured that 85 per cent of our orders have been dispatched within 3-5 days. In our international sales, 90 per cent of our goods have left within the standards delivery and lead times as per customer’s commitment. We continue to work with our operations team to keep improving our customer service and happiness.

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the bio supplier industry?

COVID-19 has changed the landscape of the world and affected families, businesses, and the way of our lives. We at Abdos are genuinely inspired by the selfless healthcare workers around the world who have been the front liners and worked tirelessly to care for the people in need. Life sciences and the biotech industry have been the frontline industry providing necessary products and services to fight this pandemic. The bio supplier industry is helping to fight Covid-19 with necessary consumables, equipment’s, reagents, vaccine manufacturing consumables and necessary consumables for making molecular diagnostic kits. I believe most companies in bio supplying industry should have grown in high double digits keeping in mind the present market demands.  During this time all manufacturers have increased capacity and new manufacturers have entered in the Biosupply space which will result in demand supply gap in the market in the post Covid-19 situation. I expect the BioSupplier Industry will go through a lot of transformation post Covid also.

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