An Executive Guide: Careers :: Saturday, February 24, 2001

The next revolution

Chitra Phadnis Anjali Prayag

Though there have been a few false starts, a career in biotechnology holds promise for the future.

Sudeenly everyone is talking biotech. Touted as the science that will dominate the 21st century and the saviour of the world's food crisis, the subject got a double fillip last year with the completion of the human genome decoding.

Close on the heels of all the hype is the question -- will this take the shine off infotech? Even the most optimistic rule out the possibility, though the prediction is that at some point the two areas will come together as bioinformatics.

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairperson, Biotechnology Task Force, Karnataka and Managing Director, Biocon India, believes that IT and BT (biotechnology) both have enormous opportunities.

While she has been speaking of biotech being the `next revolution' after IT at various fora, she also admits that it would ``take a while for BT to overtake IT. What is more likely to happen is the fusion of the two sectors over time through career opportunities in Informatics.''

In India, biotech as a subject for study has been around since at least the 1980s. For one reason or the other, the industry failed to take off and students of biotech were forced to either take up teaching or go abroad for higher studies.

Vijay Chauthaiwale, a scientist at Torrent Pharmaceuticals, says that the drive to push biotech in the '80s and '90s had resulted in a large number of qualified students with not enough jobs to go around.

The solution is to `plan for tomorrow' and evolve reasonable policies. But it is difficult to predict the growth of an industry, says Dr Paula E Stephan, Professor of Economics at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies in Georgia, who has studied the trends in bioinformatics as a career option. ``We don't really want tens of thousands of people into bioinformatics, because we still don't know what the growth will be like.''

She, however, admitted that universities take time getting a programme started. ``By the time it takes off and the students graduate, market conditions would have changed,'' she points out.

``Today, things are slightly different. There is a huge global market for biotech and India can cash in on it, but only if we get our act together,'' said the Vice-President of the biotech division of a large conglomerate who didn't wish to be quoted.

``The industry suffers from a surfeit of regulations,'' he said. A recent article in the science magazine Nature blamed regulations as the one of the biggest road-blocks to the development of biotechnology in the country. ``If we take six years to bring BT into the country, then nobody will want to touch the Indian biotech industry,'' he added.

Biotech also comes with other disadvantages, the main one being constant comparison to infotech -- its more glamourous rival.

Venture capitalists shy away from the industry which has a long incubation period and results take a long time coming. ``We have been spoilt by the quick returns in the IT industry are hesitant to invest in biotech,'' confessed one venture capitalist.

The Indian experience with biotech has not been very encouraging. Low level biotechnology which was hailed as a potential business area for India has also failed to deliver.

Outsourced work such as replication of planting material through tissue culture, clinical trials and clinical data collection can be done in the country cost effectively. (Clinical trails in India cost just a tenth of what they would in the US). But companies were not competitive enough and did not adopt market oriented business practices, say sources.

Despite several drawbacks, there is much optimism for the growth of the industry, which is predicted to grow by 10-15 per cent. (It grew from $ 20 billion in 1999 to $ 75 billion in 2001).

The pharmaceuticals industry, for one has a great demand for biotech students. With bioinformatics, proteamics and pharmacogenomics coming up, there is a huge demand in the pharma sector. SmithKline Beecham is a major employer.

But bioinformatics, which holds great promise for pharmaceutical and medical research, has a problem finding professionals qualified in both life sciences and information technology.

According to estimates there is a global shortage of one million professionals in bioinformatics alone. Today, the US universities are facing a strange problem. With their faculty and students being lured away by the industry, universities are complaining that there are no people left to train the next generation.

The shortage of professionals has sent salaries sky high. Starting salaries are double that of graduates in other disciplines. ``Salaries are on par with the infotech industry even in India,'' said one vice-president.

Dr Stephan, however, found that most students did not know of the salaries and the opportunities in the industry because of lack of information.

``While this is a very hot field, it is still a very small field. Our estimate, for example, in 1999 is that there were around 600 to 700 positions advertised for bioinformatics positions in the Science journal. It is undoubtedly growing, but even with growth the magnitudes will not be comparable to the IT industry,'' she added.

The industry has managed to catch the eye of the Government. Karnataka has not only set up a biotech task force, but a biotech venture fund and a new biotech policy are on the anvil. An Institute of Bioinformatics & Applied Biotechnology in Bangalore has been set up and is expected to start post graduate courses this year.

The only other course in bioinformatics is offered by the Pune University. According to the Karnataka IT secretary, Vivek Kulkarni, the Vision group on Biotechnology, has recommended steps to bridge the gap in education in this field.