Part - I

Over the last couple of years, one has come across numerous articles highlighting the immense potential of Biotechnology (BT). Almost all of them invariably ended with a confident prognosis - Indian BT will emulate the success of Indian IT! As simple as that!

But is it really all that simple? Are IT and BT so similar that success in the former can be taken as a reason for the success of the latter? Well, having recently interned at ABLE (Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises), this writer thinks quite the opposite.

IT and BT - The Analogy

One can see many similarities between the two fields which will become more pellucid from the following points: -

• Both demand high intellectual capital, which India has in abundance.

• India has a tremendous cost competitiveness advantage, partly due to the huge pool of skilled workforce.

• India is seen as a promising outsourcing destination for pharma and BT; certainly IT outsourcing needs no introduction.

• In the early going, both industries focused on services-based business models (rather than original product development).

• In certain segments, the two domains even overlap. Bio-informatics, which combines expertise in both biology and IT, is a promising new discipline.

• Both fields benefit from top class higher-education institutes within the country (IITs, IISc, CCMB, et al).

• India has demonstrated world class capabilities in both fields. While TCS, Infosys and Wipro have proved India’s mettle in IT, Biocon is fast putting India on the global BT map.

There are two other commonalities between BT and IT. Both share Bangalore and Hyderabad as key industry hubs (owing largely to the supportive state government policies). And interestingly, while the richest Indian (Mr. Azim Premji) hails from the IT sphere, the richest Indian lady (Ms. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw) has BT to thank!

But, to reiterate the point - it would be naïve to envisage that Indian BT will chart the same trajectory as Indian IT. There are significant differences, which compels one to refrain from uncritical acceptance of that hypothesis.

Next

* Contributed by -
Himanshu Rawat,
PGP 2003-05,
TAPMI, Manipal.
Published in Bi-annual Journal of TAPMI - 'Amartya'.