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[Contn.] Arcane Goals, Renegade Souls and The Search for Gold Cutting-edge research, cut-throat business So Hyderabad is aswirl with biotech buzzwords, dreams and ideas, old money looking for new nooks, scientists dogged by dreamy entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs dogged by dreamy scientists. There are rivalries-companies and scientists run down each others techniques and credentials-and, oh yes, there is also cutting-edge biotech research. Part the curtains of chaos and you will see the promise.
First, Hyderabad is home to one-third of India's pharma industry, with a few honourable exceptions largely copy cats who used loose patent laws to produce already discovered drugs. As the world patent regime closes in on India, there is a driving need for original research. To do this they must go down to the building blocks: genes and molecules. Second, the city has a reservoir of biotech scientists in a number of publicly funded research institutions. One of the most prominent of these is the sprawling Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), where one evening its director, Dr Lalji Singh, 54, takes questions on Hyderbad's biotech boom by resorting to an hour-long slide show. ''All this excitement,'' he explains, ''is because of the human genome project.'' Like every biotechie, he knows the age of predictive-as opposed to today's preventive-medicine is at hand. ''it has already set up a reputation for us,'' says Singh. ''There is every chance we can emerge as leaders of the biotech revolution.'' It is a lecture clearly familiar to Singh. Singh doesn't mind the time spent in such discussions, and for a sum he will willingly share CCMB's vast repository of expert manpower and machines. What he does mind are the sometimes blatant attempts at poaching that follow. He won't take names, but it's easy to grasp the buzz from the market. Poachers descend on Hyderabad to scour CCMB and established biotech companies like Shantha for valued expertise. One of them is India's largest conglomerate, the Reliance group, which has stealthily set up Reliance Life Sciences, an unlisted company that is rarely talked about even within the group. According to CCMB insiders, the institute did four project reports for Reliance, after which the company tried to pinch the concerned researchers. Since July 2000, Singh has fielded nearly 40 or more inquiries from Indian and foreign companies for expertise and collaboration on bioinformatics-the new field that aims to use the power of computing to solve the problems of biology-and contract research, the subcontracting of scientific problems. ''I've been advising all these companies that come here that biotech is a very risky business,'' says Singh. ''But even if 10 per cent succeed, that's quite significant.'' There is a lot of old money available in Hyderabad to chase the biotech chimera, though the business of biotech is costly, fraught with risks and time consuming. Unlike IT where the raw materials are basically a PC and brainpower, biotech requires not just brainpower-very specialised and scarce-but very expensive equipment.
Vijay Kumar Datla knows this. So the chairman of Biological E. Ltd, with the wisdom of nearly half a century in the pharma and vaccine business and a cushion of a Rs 170 crore turnover, simply pays up for using existing publicly funded research facilities. He has a 10-member group of his own scientists working at CCMB and is talking to three more institutes. ''We don't have the internal expertise and we can't do all this research,'' says Datla. ''Plus, there are no guarantees, but it's best to be in the field.'' Biotech, he adds, only ''logically expands'' Biological E.'s vaccine basket (vaccines already account for a third of the company's turnover). How much will he invest in the biotech thrust? There's that magical figure again: Rs 100 crore. ''We have,'' he says, ''a 30-year advance over the one-product companies.'' It is a not-so-subtle potshot at genetically engineered vaccine pioneers Shantha and Bharat Biotech, though these two companies are really the only successful biotech start-ups thus far, both focussing on the hepatitis B vaccine. In 1998, shantha Biotechnics got the government of India's award for the best R&D in the industry; in 1999 Bharat Biotech got that award. They are now trying to diversify into other biotech fields. Last year Bharat Biotech even received a $1 million grant from the Bill Gates foundation to develop a malaria vaccine. Shantha's Reddy freely takes potshots at his rival, but after some intemperate words, he settles down to describing how his scientific success implies tremendous pressures for internships and jobs from training institutes to the state's governor. ''Professors call and praise me, then ask if we can give internships, colleges ask if we can put 'collaboration with Shantha Biotech' on their brochures,'' complains Reddy. ''Biotech has become an attractive 18-year-old girl-everyone wants to date her.'' And so you see the Nagarjuna group, known for their fertilizer plant and some questionable financial management, setting up their agricultural biotech start-up, Bijam Biosciences. CEO Rahul Raju is chary of publicity, shunning phone calls and e-mails. Overall, it makes sense. For instance, it costs $6,000 (Rs 27,000) per sq. ft to set up a waterproof, sterile ''clean room'' in the U.S. To set up a clean room in Hyderabad would cost Rs 5,000 per sq. ft. A technician who costs $20 an hour in the U.S. would cost $1 in India-if of course you can find one. Bioinformaticians are a case in point. With the human genome unravelled, a rush of Indian companies is heading toward this subset of biotech. Quite simply, there just aren't enough people in the world who can straddle the worlds of infotech and molecular biology. Not surprisingly, it is in this field that Hyderabad's rush to biotech is most advanced, allowing entrepreneurs to offer unique opportunities to local scientists. Putting protein superfamilies to work So one day you're analysing protein superfamilies in cutting-edge labs housed in the period stone buildings of Cambridge, England. Three years later you're rubbing shoulders with a shopping mall, teaching students the basics of molecular biology in a building called ''My Home Tycoon'' in Kudan Bagh. Dr Guru Prasad, 41, has no problems with that. A 17-year career researcher with 25 papers to his credit, he doesn't have much time to add to his tally any longer. The head of bioinformatics at GVK Biosciences Pvt Ltd. is articulate, sound-byte-savvy and his tie-and-polished-shoes attire allows him to merge easily with the corporate world. His employers are the GVK group, with interests that range from hotels (they run all three of Hyderabad's Taj hotels, the Taj Gateway, the Taj Banjara and the Taj Krishna) to power generation. Dr Guru Prasad honed his research skills in the U.K., returning to Hyderabad's Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, where he developed a database of structural motifs in proteins. That arcane pursuit has now been put to good use since January 2001 in designing and structuring three-month courses for bioinformatics professionals.
Scientists like Guru Prasad are critical to biotech companies. Since most promoters have no idea of the field, they need to pick scientists who can tell them not just how to do things but even what to do. ''Sanjay Reddy (the CEO of the company) had visions of setting up a lifesciences company,'' explains Guru Prasad. ''I saw the severe need for bioinformaticians in this post-genomics area. It is a great place to start.'' Dr V. Subramaniam, 25, agrees. A medical doctor with a post graduate from Manipal, Karnataka, he's taken a loan to pay the Rs 1 lakh for his three-month basic bioinformatics course at GVK biosciences. ''It's very challenging and very exciting,'' says Subramaniam, the son of an electrician at a Bangalore telephone factory. ''I'll be able to interface between drug discovery and medicine. I may not know the exact details but I can hasten research.'' At rival Xpert Global Tech, set up by G. Deepak Reddy, a nephew of former MP T. Subbi Rami Reddy, the course fee for a six-month diploma in bioinformatics is Rs 1.15 lakh. Lalji Singh of CCMB snorts at courses run by companies like GVK. ''That's just exploitation. No worthwhile bioinformatics training can last three months.'' Former colleague Guru Prasad, says: ''But it's a start. A person from this course should be able to take the amino-acid sequence of proteins and convert it into a 3-d structure.'' Three fourths of his students are from the new-economy-savvy south. The machines they use are 30 state-of-the-art, high-powered Silicon Graphics computers capable of modelling the complex interaction of genes, molecules and proteins. The investment in GVK's facilities: Rs 10 crore. Guru Prasad is currently preparing a business plan that could make GVK an integrated lifesciences company, eventually getting into ''the drug-discovery pipeline''. Where is the rush headed? There's no harm in risk and possible glory. It it fails, it's just a little more money down the drain in this city of easy money. For the scientists, there's always the old life. ''If this biotech boom doesn't work,'' Guru Prasad smiles, ''you can always come back to academic work-and write two more papers.'' 1
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