Indian biotech's bumpy road

The rush to join in India's latest boom sector has led to a bottleneck.

Vinay Vasant didn't think twice about returning to India from England, after a year-long biotechnology master's at Newcastle University. He missed home and had heard a lot about India's blooming biotechnology sector. The career prospects, he predicted, would be bright. Although most of his Indian classmates stayed on in Britain, Vasant packed his bags and flew to Pune.

A year later, Vasant is wondering whether he should have boarded the plane. Despite his foreign credentials and several promising interviews, Vasant has yet to land a job. "I thought I would come back and get opportunities, but I am sitting at home," he says. "A lot of young students now ask me for advice on whether they should go into biotech, but I don't know whether to encourage or discourage them."

Vasant's confusion reflects a growing anxiety among graduates who are struggling to find a foothold in India's growing biotechnology market. It's been a rude awakening for those who flocked to the field after widespread media reports likened the growth of Indian biotech to the country's startling information-technology boom that began in the 1990s. Cashing in on that perception, hundreds of private institutes sprang up and now churn out thousands of bachelor's- and master's-level biotechnology graduates every year.

Unfortunately, the hype has outstripped reality, say industry observers. India's biotech industry is growing, but hasn't matured enough to absorb all the country's fresh talent. Making matters worse, the quality of biotech education is often inadequate. Despite the many degree holders, industry officials say it has been a chore recruiting talent with the requisite skills. "Unless we do something now, human resources will be a big limitation for the growth of India's biotechnology industry," says Kottaram Narayanan, president of the Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE) and managing director of agri-biotech company Metahelix Life Sciences in Bangalore.

Indian biotech generated revenues of some $2 billion in 2006–07, 60% of it from exports, according to the latest industry survey by ABLE and trade publication BioSpectrum India. Biopharmaceuticals — particularly the development of generic drugs and affordable vaccines — is the sector's biggest profit-maker, generating about 70% of total biotech revenues fuelled, in part, by profitable partnerships and mergers with companies in the West and other parts of Asia. The 'bioservices' market — typically drug companies outsourcing clinical-trial tasks to contract research organizations (CROs) — takes in around 13% of the total biotech pie. Bt cotton, the only transgenic agricultural product on the market, has made about 10%. Biomanufacturing and bioinformatics are also starting to play a part.

Innovation needed

Yet India's biotech market is still finding its feet when it comes to home-grown biotech inventions and discoveries. For a real boom, Indian scientists need to start innovating, says Virender Kumar Vinayak, president of biopharmaceutical R&D at health-care company Panacea Biotec in New Delhi. The emphasis should be on developing new biomolecules, tools and medical devices. This will require a steady supply of critically thinking scientists with solid hands-on skills. But therein lies the problem.

The inconsistent and largely unregulated biotech education sector is producing up to 30,000 graduates every year, according to reports from BioSpectrum India. "A large number of teaching shops have opened up in India, but most of these churn out improperly trained biotechnologists," says Vinayak. There is a dire need to improve course curricula to meet the requirements of the industry, he adds.

Many of the estimated 300 private programmes lack lab space and basic equipment. "Some of these graduates have never even seen a gel apparatus," says Rajeev Soni, chief operating officer of CRO Premas Biotech, based near Delhi. Soni says Premas has to train graduates for at least six months before they are ready for the job. "This lag time is really hurting the industry," he says.

Krishna Ella, managing director of vaccine-maker Bharat Biotech in Hyderabad, says that his company receives 300–500 applications for every new job opening, but the vast majority of candidates don't fit the bill. "It's not just a degree that is important," Ella says. "The most important things are practical skills and the ability to think critically as a scientist." Worsening matters, there's a dearth of good teachers at private programmes, particularly in small or remote towns.

Aparajita Mitra, who did a bachelor's degree in biotechnology at Fergusson College in Pune, laments the lack of hands-on training and equipment. Dissatisfied with her career prospects in biotech, she is pursuing an MBA. Barely one-third of her college class of 30 are still working in biotech, with most stuck in underpaid administrative and technician positions, Mitra says.

Not all private programmes are poorly equipped. New Delhi's Amity University and Tamil Nadu's SRM University, for example, have spacious labs and cutting-edge equipment such as protein-purification and electrophoresis systems. These programmes have the money to attract qualified staff. SRM also has ties with industry, enabling bachelor's students to do company internships in their final year. But such schools charge up to 100 times more — around US$4,000 in tuition fees per year — than government programmes.

India's government has actually fostered some strong biotech feeder programmes. In the mid-1980s, prime minister Rajiv Gandhi gave $500,000 to five universities to establish world-class biotech degrees; they bought modern research tools and recruited high-profile Indian scientists from around the world. The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) funds 60 programmes producing some 1,000 graduates every year, according to Suman Govil, a DBT adviser for human-resource development. The government awards recurring grants of up to $75,000 a year to each of its sponsored programmes, and has spent more than $5 million this year on biotech teaching and training alone, Govil says.

"Our students have not really faced any problems with regard to finding opportunities," says Rakesh Bhatnagar, chair of the biotechnology centre at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, who left a research career at the US National Institutes of Health to come to Delhi. The university was among the first five to receive the government's biotech grant and is regarded as one of India's top biotech centres. Only 20–30 students get in, by way of a competitive exam. They learn basic sciences such as immunology and genetics in the first year and spend another year working on a real research problem in the lab, says Bhatnagar.

Expansion limited

But even India's best institutes have struggled to recruit experienced staff, says geneticist Bharat Chattoo, coordinator of the biotech programme at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, one of India's first feeder programmes. The government hasn't helped much, he says: "Most places have not got additional faculty positions after their programmes were started. How is the programme meant to rejuvenate and grow?"

Even qualified graduates are finding few jobs with a real biotech focus, says Kumaraswamy Ramasamy, dean of SRM's school of biotechnology. Every year, almost half of SRM's 180 BSc graduates end up going into the IT sector to work in bioinformatics companies, Ramasamy says. Many others find work at CROs. To expand skill sets and attract an array of employers, SRM is giving mandatory computer courses and emphasizing communication and languages. This flexibility sets private schools apart from government programmes, which accept far fewer students and focus entirely on research, Ramasamy adds.

Although that approach may serve a short-term need in the market, Chattoo believes that it's not seeding a new crop of scientific innovators. "We need to provide an ecosystem in which innovations can thrive," he says. "My role as a teacher is not to produce people who are vocationally trained but people who can be leaders."

Government and industry officials are now kick-starting various measures to ease the mismatch between academia and industry. The DBT offers short-term training courses for biotechnology teachers around India. The department also runs a programme that places fresh master's graduates in six-month, paid industry internships. It placed 200 students last year, and intends to place at least 500 this year, Govil says.

Meanwhile, ABLE, in collaboration with a government advisory group, plans to start a series of competitive 'biotechnology finishing schools' for master's-level graduates who would spend six months to a year working on a real industry project while honing fundamental science concepts and analytical skills. The first such venture — with an initial group of 100 students — is due to start with the 2008 academic year in the southern state of Karnataka. Narayanan and others hope the model, if successful, will be copied in other parts of the country. "Once a person in biotechnology is properly trained, he or she will be immediately picked up by companies," says Narayanan. But this runs counter to the experiences of young graduates such as Vasant, who are anxiously waiting for the Indian biotech sector to live up to the hype.

Article source: Nature

Nature 450, 580-581 (21 November 2007) | doi:10.1038/nj7169-580a