Contract research has emerged in India during mid 1980s with the advent of the IT sector. During those days, very few people understood contract research in drug development because they knew about IT. We are amongst the first in India to emerge as a company purely into contract research in a professional way.

One major strength in India is that people have genuine service attitude. Our familiarity to language, deep penetration into education, our culture, timings, geographical location are some of our other strengths. The weak points are the need for more stable political condition, more organized holidays and improvement in customs although there has been a considerable improvement in the last ten years.

The scope is encouraging. Today the total research effort is increasing and pharma companies who are into research do not want to incur lot of cost on their own. Outsourcing was never seen earlier. The $100 million domestic market will still grow bigger and could become a billion dollars in about five years’ time.

There is scope for many players both major and minor, but only some may stay back. Many will not be able to stand the test of time because of lack of infrastructure, quality control, intellectual inputs and capabilities.

We do not think there will be any dramatic changes because today we are working with all the companies who are geared up for post 2005 scenario. The only thing we could foresee may be increase in the number of Indian customers. Therefore, there will be a lot more discovery effort coming in and a lot of Multinationals will come to India. Things will certainly improve.

The very moment India gets clarified on its IPR laws and retains its cost effectiveness and the talent pool, we will see a multi-fold increase in this business over the years.