ENTREPRENEUR ...IS IMPORTANT

SEAT OF SUCCESS

WHO TAKES THE CREDIT FOR THE BUSINESS: THE ENTREPRENEUR, HIS EMPLOYEES OR THE BANKER?
One day, Brahma, father of all living creatures, found a grain of rice at his feet. “Who is responsible for you?” he asked. The farmer claimed responsibility, as he had sown the seed and harvested the grain. The seed claimed responsibility, as without a seed, no grain can be created. The soil claimed responsibility, as without soil a seed cannot germinate. The sun claimed responsibility, as without sunlight plants cannot grow. Finally the rain claimed responsibility as unless there is timely and adequate rain, nothing can grow.

“Everyone is essential for the creation of the grain,” said Brahma, “But only one is critical: the farmer. It is the farmer who makes a plant a valued crop. Without him, rice would have been just another weed in the wild forest.”

So it is with business. Who claims responsibility for success? At the time of investment, no one really knows if the business will be successful. Success is always realised in hindsight. Who takes the credit for the business: the entrepreneur, his employees, the banker? It is very difficult to pinpoint a single factor to success.

But ultimately, everything depends on the entrepreneur who took the initiative to transform an idea into reality. Had he not had the desire, had he not overcome his doubt, the enterprise would never take shape.

In the Rig Veda, the poet wonders what existed before everything else. And after much pondering he concludes, the first to exist, even before breath, is desire – kama. Without kama, there would no movement from formlessness (asat) to form (sat), from darkness (tamas) to light (jyoti), from hopelessness (mrityu) to hope (amrita).

The entrepreneur is the seat of kama, without whom culture would not exist.

Parakh asked his father: to what did the family owe its fortune? His father said, “To the consumers who buy the metal we produce, to the workers who work in our mines, to the government which regulates us fairly, to the market that has been favorable, to the earth which provides us the minerals that we mine, but most importantly to my grandfather who invested all his wealth in the mining business. They were traders then, but he wanted to be involved in a primary industry, something close to earth, that would support all other industries. His family did not support him. So he raised capital on his own. Your great grandfather’s desire and ability to cope with risk, is the critical factor without which we would not be where we are.”

- Chief Belief Officer of the Future Group.
ETCD 4N1111

YOUTUBE VIDEO ..YOU CAN EARN LAKHS

Have a great video? YouTube can help you earn lakhs
YouTube, the video sharing website, is paying its users whose funny family videos generate adequate interest
The deal is a type of partnership between the families and YouTube, which splits revenues from advertising that is shown alongside popular videos.From giggling toddlers to spoof home videos, funny family outings and bawling teenagers, the deal takes in a range of videos posted online by proud parents.
YouTube monitors all uploads to its website, and if there is enough interest or it believes the video will go viral, it contacts the user who uploaded it to offer them the chance to make money.The company is said to have developed an algorithm for working out which videos are going to become internet hits.Advertisements placed on the page or embedded within the video clip can generate a huge revenue stream that is then shared between the user and YouTube, it is reported.
One user, Howard Davies-Carr, whose home video of his son Charlie, then one, biting repeatedly biting the finger of his older brother Harry, aged three, has been watched nearly 400 million times, says he has made more than £100,000 (Rs 68.75 lakh) from the partnership."Ever since the boys were born, I've had the camera out," Davies-Carr, from the Thames Valley, told The Sunday Times IN THE uk."But 'Charlie bit my finger - again', that was pretty much the first video I've posted online. It was just a small captured moment I wanted to share with their godfather in Colorado."'Charlie bit my finger - again' is just one of a number of funny family videos that are generating thousands of pounds for users.David DeVore, who filmed his son coming round from an anaesthetic at the dentist in 2008, made almost £100,000 in the first year after uploading the video to YouTube.
Katie Clem, who filmed her daughter Lily's reaction to news of a family trip to Disneyland, has amassed more than £3,000 and five million views for her video, while Randy McEntee's film of his 17-month-old twin sons as been viewed 50 million times. As well as being contacted by YouTube, parents who think their home video is going to be a web hit can apply to the company to start a channel.While some users have donated the money to charity, others have said they are putting it towards their children's education.It is understood that hundreds of American users are making six-figure sums through online partnerships with the video sharing website, although figures for the UK are not unknown.Last year, the number of peopleearning £6,000 a year through viral family videos almost doubled, it is claimed.Kevin Allocca, the manager ofYouTube trends, told The Sunday Times: "A tiny percentage of the videos that are uploaded to the site get up to the four or five million views."What they all have in common is the speed with which they are shared."
-The Daily Telegraph DNA 17nov1111

STRESS MANAGEMENT..AT IITS AND IIMS

IITs, IIMs Devise Ways to Take Stress Head-On

ALL-OUT BATTLE:

Technical and management institutes tweak study programmes, promote extra-curricular activities, invite parents to campus and even arrange counselling with psychologists to help students cope with the burden of high expectations
Life took an unpleasant turn the moment Abhinav D (name changed) joined IIT Kanpur. A topper throughout school, the 18-year-old suddenly found himself struggling to cope in a class full of students equally bright or even sharper. Before long, he found himself spiralling into depression. A long stint of counselling later, Abhinav is faring better in his studies and is an enthusiastic participant in campus activities. Many others aren’t as fortunate as Abhinav.

This year, seven students have taken their lives across the country’s premier technological institutes, an unsettling new high. While 5,857 student suicides were reported across India in 2006, the figure jumped to 7,379 in 2010, according to data released by the National Crime Records Bureau recently. Only the best and the brightest make it through the country's leading educational institutes.

But this is just the beginning of the battle. Fierce competition and the burden of expectation — a great job and salary are seen as natural corollaries — have been taking their toll on young students. The issues range from family pressure, adjustment and relationship problems, placements and fear of failure. The good news, however, is, institutes are stepping in to provide support. From counselling cells to student and faculty mentorship programmes, extracurricular activities, changes in curriculum, rescheduling of classes or even giving students the option of switching to slow-track programmes, every effort is being made to ease their burden.

Counselling sessions with qualified psychologists and psychiatrists with assured anonymity are par for the course at the IITs, ISB and other institutes of higher learning.

IIT Delhi has recently started an intensive Student Mentorship Programme, where third-year students are assigned five to eight students from their hostels in the same department to have personalised interactions on all issues, ranging from academic to co-curricular, participation in extra-curricular activities and general problems. This is especially useful during the initial stay of the freshers on campus, where interaction with seniors is limited, and prevents ragging. Members are selected after an interview. Nearly a 100 mentors are selected for 700-800 freshers. “It’s a big help for first-year students, including those from small towns, to make a transition into college life,” says IIT Delhi's general secretary, students affairs council, Rachit Gupta.

IIT Kanpur says has been offering extensive counselling services and has even been helping out other institutes, including building a template for IIT Gandhinagar. They have even taken the help of Dr Manas Mandal, director of the Defense Institute of Psychological Research, who has dealt extensively with issues of stress among soldiers. “For our 700-odd undergraduate students, we have assigned about 200-250 student guides from higher batches to help them with their orientation. Each student guide is again attached to a faculty guardian and all issues are dealt with in a very confidential manner,” says dean (student affairs) AK Ghosh.

This apart, students are given the option of dropping courses if they can’t cope, and making up for it over the summer.

Management schools are not far behind. At Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, director PT Joseph teaches ‘EQ and Leadership’ as a mandatory foundation course. “Students are helped to identify their emotional problems as part of the course. There is a group therapy session with 10-12 students per session, which helps them build rapport with their classmates so they can help each other,” says Joseph.

IIM Bangalore has also taken initiatives to deal with academic stress. “Students who are not doing too well are identified in the middle of the first year and put on a slow-track programme, so they can complete their course over three years instead of two. We are also looking at implementing changes in the grading system from next year,” says PGP chairperson Ishwar Murthy.

At IIM Lucknow, director Devi Singh says the moment any sign of problem crops up, the institute gets involved through the student community and faculty. “Parents are informed in a discreet way and we get them over to spend time with the child. If necessary, we even let them take the student away for a few days.

That apart, all IIMs have reduced pressure in the first year in terms of the number of courses,” says Singh. Students should be encouraged to participate in extracurricular activities, says VK Gupta, officiating director, MDI Gurgaon. “We have a lot of facilities including a gymnasium, golf, tennis, badminton and so on for students to destress so they can relax and enjoy,” says Gupta. But will all these initiatives ultimately help in curbing student suicides or stress? “Counselling and mentoring are very well, but you can’t take away from the fact that in today’s world, all of us are ambitious and institutes are constantly driving us to excel. It’s hard to maintain that balance sometimes,” says Vivek Nair (name changed), a second year student of the National Institute of Technology, Warangal.

It’s high time societal mindsets were transformed, says IIM Lucknow’s Singh. “We refuse to recognise that stress is a problem; neither do we recognise the role psychiatrists have to play... As we become more urbanised, these problems are bound to increase. Creating instututional and societal infrastructure is a must,” he says.

WHAT INSTITUTES DO TO HELP

COUNSELLING is provided at most institutes to help students focus, understand and deal with the issues affecting them

THE counsellor offers support and understanding, and respects anonymity

IITS also offer guidance from seniors and faculty members assigned to them. They are also encouraged to take part in fun activities

IIM Bangalore and Lucknow have made changes in curriculum to allow students to switch to slowtrack programmes

AT XLRI Jamshedpur, behavioral science courses help dealing with stress.

A home-away-from-home culture is encouraged IIT Kanpur allows students to drop courses if they can't cope, and making up for it in summers
(SBasuET15N1111)

EDUCATION...MISSION ADMISSION

The pressure to gain acceptance to select schools makes parents turn to pricey consultants who can write college essays and script interviews

In the summer of 2006, Kabir S Bedi graduated from school in Delhi and scored high marks in his CBSE class XII examinations. Like many Indian students, he had set aside his extracurriculars in the years leading up to his board exam, making him a less attractive applicant for the top Ivy Schools in the United States. For help in creating a well-rounded application that would enable his admission into his dream school, the University of Pennsylvania, he approached Eduabroad consulting services. On their recommendation he took a gap year, retook his SAT, attended a private college in Delhi where he would get credits he could transfer to his undergraduate degree, and revived his extracurricular activities: played polo, learnt fencing, worked at an AIDS NGO and took Shiamak Davar’s dance lessons. In May 2011, Bedi graduated Magna Cum Laude at UPenn and has recently started working with Ernst & Young in Washington DC. Thousands of applicants across India aspiring to an international education approach college consulting services who promise to mould them into well-rounded, over-achieving, model students. Now ubiquitous, consultants perform a host of services — everything from writing the clients’ college essays from scratch to encouraging extracurricular activities and even coaching students for interviews. Increasingly, a well-heeled group of parents is willing to pay the sky to better their children’s chances at admission; ranging from Rs 10,000 to 15,000 for a single meeting to Rs 35,000 for a full package of services. Pratiba Jain of Eduabroad, a consulting service based in Mumbai, feels that the business of education consulting — in particular preparing children for foreign education — has grown multifold in the past few years. “My own firm, has grown more than 40 per cent each year in the last two to three years,” says Jain. However, numerous firms indulge in questionable practices and this has encouraged the alumni of reputed colleges in the UK and US to start consulting services upon returning to India. Having been through the admissions process themselves, these students claim inside knowledge of the admissions process. Two recent graduates from the University of Oxford, Amay Ruia and Gayeti Singh, started Varsity Consulting in Mumbai and Delhi, in a bid to provide an alternative to the run of the mill consulting services. “Since there are more students going abroad now, there are a higher number of education consultants. In the UK alone, the number of Indian students has doubled in the last decade,” says Ruia. “However, there is a dearth of quality education consultancies that offer a more focused and personalised approach.” R² Admissions Consulting is another consultancy based in Mumbai started by recent college alumni, Georgetown graduate Roisin Pelley and Russel Mason, an alumni of Harvard University. Being American nationals who graduated from top-tier universities and with experience in admissions offices, they saw an opportunity to offer their experience to others with the same aspirations. While there are viable alternatives being created, it is often difficult for the uninitiated to know whom they can trust to guide them through this crucial decision. While choosing a college is a critical decision in a student’s academic and professional life, a consulting service can sometimes actually be detrimental to the process. The aggressive practices of consultants have received an uneasy response both from American colleges and high school teachers. “In a truly international school that is preparing students for college, there must be a college counsellor within the school,” says Michael J Thomson, director at Mercedes-Benz International School in Pune. “The advice that students receive is then neutral; there is no vested interests. Up to 60 North American colleges come to Pune through places like the Council of International Schools — they advertise their schools and interview candidates.” This, he points out, allows students to have a direct relationship with the admissions officer with no middleman intervening.
• (NEHA THIRANI TOICREST 5N1111)

ENERGY RELATED..SOLAR POWERED PILLOW

Solar powered pillow gives light at night

LuminAid is an inflatable plastic pillow that’s also a powerful lantern. It is meant for the poor who have no access to electricity and is currently being tested in India

Alot of people in India and the world live without electricity, Which is why graduate students from Columbia University have launched a campaign to deliver their solar-rechargeable lanterns the packs flat and inflates to create a lightweight, waterproof source of light. Anna Stork and Andrea Sreshta have designed the solar lantern called LuminAID, at first glace it looks like a small plastic bag with a white-dot pattern. But the LuminAID is actually an inflatable plastic pillow with a thin solar panel and two coin-sized batteries. The device inflates to produce light that is similar to the quality a lantern provides. The white-dot pattern on the bag diffuses the light. LuminAID can work for up to four hours with the lighting at 35Lumens, or up to six hours at 20 lumens. The four hour setting, which is ‘High’ on the device is designed for reading and working in the night. The Six hour setting ‘Low’ can be used as a night light. The device requires four to six hours of sunlight to fully charge and the batteries can be charged a maximum of 800 times. The inventors consider the lamp a good safe alternative to dangerous kerosene lamps, used in India and other parts of the world. The students plan to start a “Buy One, Gift One” concept where people can get their own LuminAID for $25. The money which LuminAID collects will go to sending the lights to needy families around the world. As a field test, LuminAID is working with organizations to distribute the light in Rajasthan, India, where they say one in two households lack electricity. The LuminAID lights will be used in rural schools, homes and by small-business owners. You can visit their Web site at www.luminaidlab.com.

MM 19nov11

EDUCATION SPECIAL ...LEARNING OR TEST TAKING?

Learning or Test Taking

There was a lot of hue and cry over the remarks that Mr Narayan Murthy made about the slump in the quality of education in IITs.
He talked about the need to overhaul the selection criteria for students seeking admission to these institutions. He said, “Thanks to the coaching classes today, the quality of students entering IITs has gone lower and lower.”
Let us look at the import of the three statements.
The first idea is about the slump in the quality of education.
How should we measure the quality of education provided by an institution of higher learning?
Is it based on the kind of jobs that the industry or academia offers to the students when they complete their educations or should we view the careers of the alumni over a period of time to answer that question?
Is the purpose of education limited to just employability or is it also about being a game changer?
Education has two possible outcomes. One lies in the employability or the tangible value of the knowledge and skills. This is more short term driven. The other is more intangible and can be measured by the impact made by alumni in society. This measure has to be long term.
On both the criteria the alumni of IITs stand tall. They boast of several well known entrepreneurs, bureaucrats and leaders of institutions not just in India but all over the world. We need to view the contribution of the current crop of students over time before we reach conclusions about their caliber.
The second issue about overhauling the selection system is to me the heart of the issue.
Any system of testing produces a set of coaching institutes. This is a natural process that happens all over the world. Hackers actually make our software better because they expose the vulnerabilities of the code.
In a connected world, there are hundreds of sites dedicated to coach people on how to write resumes and answer technical questions in an interview. The Wikipedia itself has all the ten cards of the Rorschach inkblot test that psychologists use to judge personality and thought disorders. The site also gives what are the most common responses. There are sites on the web that tell you how to fake the inkblot test. There are coaching classes to teach three year olds how to get into the elite schools of the neighborhood.
There are coaching classes for aspiring actors. Yet every actor who graduates from the acting school does not become a superstar. Every aspirational opportunity gives rise to a coaching class.
The test designers need to ensure that they are able to test what it takes to succeed in that profession.
If we want engineers to be analytically superior, then the test must check that.
If we want them to be great communicators, then the test must focus on sifting students on the basis of their written communication and presentation skills.
So, the onus of designing the right test is on the institutions.
The question to ask is whether the current entrance exam is testing the right behavior?
The ability to test well is not indicative of the ability to learn.
To design the right test we have to look at what behaviour helps a student succeed AFTER they have graduated from the institution.

The entrance exam must test not just the ability of the applicant to successfully meet the academic rigor of the institution, but also to be able to perform the demands of the profession.
The role of the teacher is not about dispensing information; it is about building a mindset that makes the student a lifelong learner.

The students are only as good as the professors they learn from.
Think about it.
- Abhijit Bhaduri , bestselling author, Chief Learning Officer of Wipro. ET 3NOV11

CAREER SPECIAL ...LOT OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR RETUNING SCIENTISTS IN BIOTECH AND BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

LOT OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR RETUNING SCIENTISTS IN BIOTECH AND BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
The return of the Lab
Subba Rao Gangi Setty spends much of his time in a small cabin with an old fan whirring above. After arriving in Bangalore in July last year, the cell biologist has set up a lab at the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology in the Indian Institute of Science to study a disease called the Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome (HPS), a type of albinism. One of a handful of senior fellows supported by a joint funding programme of the Wellcome Trust, UK, and the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, Setty, a Green Card holder, returned to a much lower salary and an un-airconditioned office so he could pursue science in India. “I went to government schools and studied on government scholarships. I felt I owed it to my country to come back and do quality science here,” says the 37-year-old from Porumamilla village, Kadappa district, Andhra Pradesh, who spent over a decade in the US—long enough that he now rolls his r’s.
Raring for a change after nine years at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, US, Setty began looking out for opportunities in the biotech industry in 2009. The recession was setting in at the time, but with two Nature papers and several other high-quality publications to his name, he found work at Proteostasis Therapeutics, a small molecule drug company in Boston. For a year, he worked on modulation of cell biological pathways to cure protein folding defects implicated in neurodegenerative diseases. “It was then that I learned about the Wellcome Trust-DBT fellowship. I had been eager to come back to India since 2006, but now, an opportunity presented itself,” he says.
A silver Macbook sits on Setty’s desk. All around, there are piles of boxes. “The department is moving to a new building soon. Hopefully I’ll get more space,” he says. The money here may not compare with what he was making in the US, but a five-year research grant of Rs 4.58 crore fully supports his research programme. (Tissue culture, cell biological reagents and microscopy are pricey). With a newly-put-together team of eight researchers, Setty is now studying protein transport pathways in cells to understand the biology behind HPS and to develop cell biological screens for albinism with lung fibrosis. He has also set up an informal network and support group for people with HPS in India.
“It’s a good time to return to India,” says Vatsala Thirumalai, who leads a group on neural circuits and development at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), a Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) centre in Bangalore. A research scientist at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, till about a year ago, Thirumalai has set up a zebrafish incubator facility at NCBS to study the development of the brain in embryos. Hundreds of these nearly-transparent fresh water fish swim frantically in special tanks in her lab. Zebrafish are widely used in the biotech industry for drug screening, and Thirumalai, during her post-doctoral research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, showed that neural networks for swimming develop very early in zebrafish, but are kept dormant until later.
“Earlier, working in India meant you were cut off. Now, I regularly Skype with my collaborator at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego,” says the 36-year-old, also a Wellcome Trust-DBT India fellow. “Government initiatives like the Ramanujan Fellowship, the Ramalingaswami Fellowship and the DBT-Wellcome Trust Fellowship have helped immensely in attracting talent back to India. Also, India is now a full member of the international Human Frontier Science Program that funds research in life sciences,” she says.
There is a sense among academics that it is easier than ever to obtain funding and forge collaborations in India. A number of factors have contributed to this: cuts in research spend in the US, the Indian Government’s pro-active support to science, a maturing biotech industry, better research output, a new crop of research institutes, and last but not the least, the image of India as an emerging scientific superpower.
Dozens of Indian researchers working in biological sciences are leaving foreign shores for home. This “trickle” of scientists, many of whom own valuable intellectual property, is set to grow considerably in the coming years, says Vijay Chandru, chairman and CEO of Strand Life Sciences—a genomics solutions and bioinformatics company based in Bangalore—and president of the Association of Biotech-led Enterprises (ABLE), a trade body that represents the Indian biotech industry. Chandru, a former computer science professor at IISc, believes that with joint efforts by industry and government, biotech could be the next major ‘reverse brain drain’ sector after IT.
From a small industry in the early 1990s, biotechnology in India has grown to a $4 billion sector of possibility. There are about 350 companies, most of them located in seven clusters across India—Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Delhi, Ahmedabad and Kolkata. “Since 2003, the industry has been growing steadily at over 20 per cent per annum. If we maintain this, we will be a $100 billion industry by 2025,” says Chandru. This growth could be spurred by demand for biosimilars—a new generation of protein-based drugs that could replace important biopharmaceuticals when they go off patent—and an expanding healthcare industry.
Strand Life Sciences, which has about 130 employees working out of an open-plan fifth-floor office in a business park on Bellary Road, Bangalore, has brought back 25 PhDs from the US in the last few years. “We were looking for people who could work with microarrays and high-tech equipment. So we hired researchers from NIH and other known institutes, mostly through referrals,” Chandru says.
Veena Hedatale is one such hire. A plant geneticist by training and a senior scientist at Strand, Hedatale gave three years to the US pharma industry before she decided to move back to Bangalore, where her family lives. An opportunity in the private sector that kept her in sync with happenings in biopharmaceuticals was just what she needed. “There is a huge difference in salaries between India and the US, but I was prepared for that,” says Hedatale, who just completed two years at Strand and hopes to start a product development company of her own one day.
Sushmita Gowri Sreekumar, another aspiring entrepreneur who joined the company about a year ago after completing a PhD programme in Zurich, says she sees a lot of promise in the Indian biotech sector. “When I decided to come back in June 2009, I knew I’d get a job or start my own diagnostics company. The number of institutes and biotech companies coming up in India is reassuring,” says Sreekumar, who has a PhD in cancer genetics.
FMCG majors like Unilever and ITC, too, are lapping up their share of the diaspora pie, says Amitabha Majumdar, a former post-doc at Cornell University, New York, who took up a position as a cell biologist at Unilever’s Whitefield office in January. “This opportunity was an excellent one. And it came at a time when many of my friends were planning to move back to India,” he says. According to Majumdar, Unilever Bangalore has hired at least four Indians from Yale, Oxford and Johns Hopkins Universities in just the last year. “A few years ago, there weren’t many cell biologists in India. Now I know many in Bangalore who are working in the same areas as I am,” says the 38-year-old who is researching immunity in cells. His wife, who just finished her PhD at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, is all set to join Indian biotechnology major Biocon.
Even as pharma and biotech companies in the West are laying off employees, India is looking for quality researchers to fill positions at new biosciences institutes such as the five Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER), the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute in Faridabad, and the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inStem) at NCBS, Bangalore. NCBS alone is responsible for bringing back half-a-dozen researchers in the last couple of years.
John Mercer, a professor at McLaughlin Research Institute, Montana, US, moved to Bangalore two months ago to run a high-throughput mice facility at inStem to help understand the molecular bases of inherited cardiomyopathy—a chronic disease of the heart muscle and one of the leading causes of cardiac death. “I see potential in the willingness of the Indian Government to invest in research. From my perspective, the US and Europe are turning away from their commitment to research and education while India's commitment is increasing,” he says. The project, a collaboration between inStem, NCBS, Mercer’s home institute and Stanford University, among others, is funded entirely by the Indian Government. Mercer, who plans to stay on for two to five years, says he and his wife Colleen Silan are here for “the opportunity and the adventure”.
“A lot of money is being pumped into scientific infrastructure. It’s a positive sign for those looking to come back,” says Thirumalai.
Kundan Sengupta agrees. After a six-year-long association with the National Cancer Institute, NIH, Bethesda, Sengupta moved base to Pune in July 2010. Now an assistant professor at IISER, Pune, the intermediate fellow of the Wellcome Trust-DBT India alliance is investigating how a basic biologic question: how do chromosomes find their correct location within a cell? “The growth of the biotech industry as well as the government’s research-oriented policies have encouraged many abroad to return to both academia and industry in India,” he says.
“It’s not just biotech, all of Indian bioscience is attracting diaspora back to India,” says Archana Purushotham, who moved to Bangalore four months ago to join inStem as a visiting scientist. A stroke specialist with experience in neuroimaging and research at Stanford University, Purushotham says inStem provided her with a unique opportunity. “It has truly been an exploratory expedition. As a practising physician who wants to spend a significant portion of time on research, some of it non-clinical, there is not much precedent in India. So it has been a challenge to blend both my worlds, and I am still in the process of trying to get it to work,” she says.
There are other, less obvious, draws. When Kaustuv Datta completed his Masters course from the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai in 1997, there were few good places in India where he could have pursued a PhD, prompting him to join the University of Michigan in the US. After nine years that he spent acquiring a PhD in molecular, cellular and developmental biology, and then doing post-doctoral research at the University of Michigan and the Scripps Research Institute, Datta returned to India in 2010 to join the University of Delhi as an assistant professor. While there is more money and infrastructure for research in the field now, Datta says it is the freedom to pursue “risky projects” at Indian universities that prompted his return.
“Tenure system is very strict in US universities. At the end of five to seven years as a post-doctoral fellow, you are evaluated on the number of papers published in that time and so on and granted tenure. It is a make or break system and prevents people from taking up risky projects. Universities here provide more secure positions, and independence to take up projects as you wish. This is a place where you can find your own identity as a researcher instead of being a post-doctoral fellow abroad working on someone else's ideas,” he says.
There are, however, serious challenges to tapping the biotech diaspora. Biotech research entails considerable capital outlay and doesn’t lend itself to entrepreneurship the way IT does. And unlike IT professionals, biotech researchers often do long post-doctoral stints, so by the time they have established themselves and are ready to move back, they are already pushing 40. “Displacement becomes much harder then. The kids are already grown up and they don’t want to move. To come back to India at such a point in one’s life, the terms have to be very attractive,” says Vijay Chandru, speaking from experience.
Sitting in her office surrounded by the smells of the lab, Vatsala Thirumalai is hopeful India will get its due. “As Thomas Friedman would say, the world of biosciences is now truly flat,” she says.
Sunrise Sector
* The Indian biotech industry, currently worth about $4 billion, has witnessed double-digit growth every year since the mid-2000s. Estimates project that with a growth rate of 20 per cent per annum, the industry will cross $10 billion in the next five years and hit $100 billion by 2025
* Biopharmaceuticals constitute about 60 per cent of the industry, with the remaining 40 per cent coming from bioservices and bioagri technology
* Biosimilars are a potential gold mine of opportunity.
Developing a biosimilar molecule in India requires an investment of $10-20 million, compared to $50-100 million in developed countries, according to industry estimates
(Inputs by Garima Mishra and Nandini Thilak 30O1011