Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Biotechnology Management will always have an edge...

Biotechnology is not just an innovative academic activity, but rather an intense industrial and commercial activity. Indian Biotechnology industry has crossed the 18,000 crores benchmark and its growing strong with almost 20 percent annual growth rate. India is already a World leader in vaccine production, biopharmaceuticals, industrial enzymes and biofuel production, bioremediation, hybrid seeds production, stem cell banking, and micropropogation commercialization, etc. The biotech market is further expected to accelerate in near future on the back of high demand for vaccines, CROs, biopesticides, biofertilizers, and biodiesel in India as well as at the global level. The Indian industry offers low cost, high quality FDA-approved products, diagnostics devices, contract manufacturing, and clinical trials services to the global markets.

Unfortunately, the supply of scientific knowledge coupled with managerial skills is not meeting the industry demand. The management talent is scarce and is often the weakest pillar in most biotechnology companies. The key to a successful career is to explore the many demanding untraditional career paths outside the routine R&D options, as many companies list the specific management positions.

This is slowly changing with the availability of biotech-oriented management programs, where the students learn how to develop and manage new ventures along with product commercialization, patenting, business development, and regulatory affairs that influences the biotechnology industry. With the growing interest in the business applications of biotechnology, this is a critical time to understand this multi-disciplinary nature of such post graduate degree program, where the students get a solid grounding in the core business disciplines in emerging bioscience industries.

The Biotechnology Management programme provides a strong and broad foundation to excel in wide range of career opportunities in the life sciences industry such as biotech business development, biotech marketing and sales, product management, intellectual property management, quality assurance and quality control management, regulatory affairs dossiers management, international business, and human resource management. Major biopharmaceutical companies hiring for such positions are Pfizer India, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Abbott India, Panacea Biotec, Merck BioVentures, Sanofi-Aventis, Bayer Healthcare, Zydus Cadilla, Spinco Biotech, Emcure/Gennova biopharmaceuticals, and Lupin Biotech, etc.