Health and Medicines

There are a host of companies operating in the biotech and bioinformatics field in India today: Avestha Gengraine, DSQ Biotech, Syngene, Mahindra-BT, Metahelix, Gangagen Biotechnologies, Genotypic Technology, and Strand Genomics. The last two were started by scientists from the government-run Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the rest are private companies.

But the earliest companies to get into biotechnology before it became such a fashionable word were Wockhardt and Biocon in the 1980s followed by Shanta Biotech and Bharat Biotech in the mid 1990s. Wockhardt, which has its main business in pharmaceuticals and healthcare, entered biotech to develop the Hepatitis-B vaccine, human insulin, and erythropoietin (EPO).

However Shanta Biotech was the first Indian company to genetically engineer the Hepatitis-B vaccine in 1998—they sold the vaccine at a fifth of the price demanded by the multinational Smith Kline Beecham. Subsequently Bharat Biotech also developed a similar vaccine and prices dropped even further. Wockhardt came out with its Biovac B in the year 2000 and organized mass immunizations where it sold the vaccine for only Rs. 100. They developed EPO in 2002 and the human insulin (called Wosulin) in 2003.

Biocon was set up to first extract enzymes and later manufacture them through fermentation—the first Indian company to master this process. Subsequently it also entered the pharmaceuticals business and set up Syngene to do contract research in the both chemical and bio engineering.


Other pharmaceutical companies have also set up biotech divisions and in-house laboratories to develop capacities in this new field.

The government

The Centre for Biochemicals was set up in 1965 as a laboratory under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). The CSIR runs several labs and acts as the conduit of funds to these from the concerned government department. The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) produces scientists and researchers in the various scientific fields.

The principal function of the centre was to import and store complex biochemicals and later distribute them to other private and government laboratories for use. Over the years the centre acquired expertise in engineering such products on its own and built up a small body of scientists skilled in this task. So in 1995 they were renamed the Centre for Biotechnology (CBT).


In 1997 Samir Brahmachari, an IISc professor, joined as Director of the CBT and began upgrading its infrastructure, increasing its scientists and researchers, and reorienting its role towards genomics and drug discovery. The Department of Biotechnology gave the CBT Rs. 7 crore for this purpose and in 2002 it was renamed the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB).