Business India, Oct 9-22, 1995
The Know Business
Can India become a player in the global knowledge market? Yes, and the trend has already started. Through an extensive investigation of knowledge based Indian business, Business India discovered companies and labs that view the opening up of the Indian economy as an opportunity.
Shivanand Kanavi
Suddenly, there is an air of excitement in a number of Indian companies and research centres. But not only excitement –more importantly, there is a curtain of silence, one that evokes secrecy.
If you walk around an R&D centre these days and ask casually what’s new, the surprising response could be the lack of an answer. All one gets is polite smile and, “Sorry, this cannot be disclosed.” It takes an enormous amount of legwork, ingenuity and creative persistence to get information on business-oriented issues. Why has this veil dropped, in organization that would brag about their lab scale results being “break throughs in technology”, only a little while back?
The answer is, because there is a new understanding of the concept of wealth today. There was a time when only tangibles counted, but in this changing world, ideas and knowledge increasingly translate into hard cash. A design, and idea, a novel chemical entity, a new testing procedure, a probe to identify the presence of certain biological molecules, a way to increase the yield an efficiency in a reaction, identification of a need in the software/hardware market which can be satisfied by a suitably designed new product –the list goes on and on. All such kinds of knowledge, and more, mean hared cash and that too in any currency in the world.
Transnational corporations, beleaguered by rising R&D costs and diminishing returns, have been on the prowl for new technology, in order to stay globally competitive. In the last three-four years, a quiet change has taken place. India has become an important destination on the itinerary of globe-trotting executive vice-presidents sourcing global technology for their giant employers. Abbott, Acer, Akzo, Du Pont, Eli Lilly, FMC, General Electric, Haldar Topsoe, Hewlett Packard, Hughes, Lummus, Motorola, Nova Nordisk, Smith Kline Beecham, Telstra, and Unilever are among the notables who already have R&D alliances in place here.
Indian industry, led by the pharmaceutical and agrochemical sectors, does not lag behind in its support of R&D. Even Reliance, which once prided itself in buying global scale manufacturing plants for commodity chemicals, apparently ignoring R&D, now highlights its joint technology development with National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) Pune, in the latest (1994-95) annual report. The NCL process, involving a novel non-polluting zeolite-based catalyst to manufacture LAB (linear alkyl benzene), is being tested in a pilot plant at Patalganga. If successful, it will put Reliance on the global technology map again - but this time as a technology supplier.
Once knowledge becomes marketable, it has to be protected as property. But even while the law is taking its time to conform to international norms, a working arrangement has come into being with the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) framing its own intellectual property rights (IPR) policy. Today its labs are signing contract research and joint technology development agreements - with confidentiality clauses written in - with Indian and foreign clients like Abbott, Du Pont, FMC, GE, Nova Nordisk, SmithKline Beecham and others.
What has catalysed these stirrings among Indian companies and labs, which now aim to become global technology players? Very simply, it is the opening up of the Indian economy. So far, India has been known for manpower export, a thin cover for what is otherwise known as "body shopping". In the meantime, Indian industry focused on importing obsolete, "proven" technology and reverse engineering, while politicians back-patted themselves with pointless claims of having built the second largest scientific-technical manpower base in the world. But today, the scene is changing.
Externally, economic stagnation in North America, Europe and Japan has led to intense competition among giant corporations. To stay ahead of one's peers, acquiring newer and newer technologies rapidly has become a must. And strategic alliances are the key to rapid acquisition.
As Dr David S. Weir, vice-president (global technology) at Du Pont, explains, "Self-sufficient, independent R&D efforts are unlikely to meet today's demands, even for giant corporations. Our search today is from a global perspective, rather than being country-specific. We have targeted India for special emphasis and created a separate technology office. For example, our tie-up with IICT (Indian Institute of Chemical Technology) Hyderabad, to screen the molecules they synthesise for agrochemical activity, might lead to the joint development of new agrochemicals with patent and licensing rights shared by both. It is a win-win agreement”
If IICT produces a molecule with novel molecule with novel agrochemical applications, Du Pont will run it through its elaborate system of screening. It will take all te necessary steps to develop it into a product and register it as a safe agrochemical in different countries. The entire process is both expensive and time consuming, taking anywhere between four and six years. IICT will have the marketing rights for India and the surrounding region, while Du Pont will have the rights for the rest of the world. On top of this IICT will get a royalty of about 15 per cent.
The most articulate champion of research as business is CSIR director-general Dr R. A. Mashelkar. Before his recent elevation to this prestigious position, Mashelkar headed the NCL. Much before the events in 1991 in Moscow, Berlin and New Delhi, he put globalisation of Indian R&D on the agenda, and started a series of changes there. Mashelkar is not only an internationally well-known chemical engineer and an authority on polymer engineering, he is also the most well-known Indian R&D manager. He transformed NCL very rapidly into a model R&D centre, one that thinks globally.
Today, NCL holds the highest number of international patents in India. A culture has been created where PhD students file international patents when they find something interesting. Patent holders are given awards and peer recognition at NCL. In fact, nine of the 21 people felicitated by NCI. at its last foundation day for authoring US patents were PhD students. Because of the patents, MNCs have made a beeline to NCI. for contract research and even joint technology development, together with sharing intellectual property rights, in catalysis and polymers. GE, Du Pont, Akzo and Neste OY are among NCL'S better known clients and collaborators. And it is beginning to payoff. NCL'S foreign exchange earnings through technology sales and contract research exceed $2 million a year.
This is quite a change from earlier attitudes. There arc many cases of missed opportunities due to the earlier emphasis on publishing papers rather than developing marketable technology. Even realising what is patentable and what is not at the right time can lead to money flowing in. For example, the DNA fingerprinting techniques developed by Dr Lalji Singh at the Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology at Hyderabad have not been patented despite being 30 per cent faster than others.
A good example of a sudden windfall as a result of holding original patent rights for a new drug molecule is that of Centchroman. Centchroman a non-steroidal oral contraceptive developed by the Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI) at Lucknow - recently attracted international attention. Due to its chemical nature, Centchroman doesn't have the side effects that steroidal contraceptives, which affect the pituitary gland have. But like other oral contraceptives, it has a limited market in India, mainly due to cultural reasons. Recently, however, scientists discovered new uses for Centchroman that promise to bring in millions of dollars for the CDRI.
Firstly, Centchroman can be used to treat breast cancer. In terminal cases it has been found that the drug reduces cancer growth. Not only that, it often can stop further growth and at the least improve the patient's profile. The human trials for this activity arc at an advanced stage.
Again, it has been found that Centchroman has been effective in halting brittleness of bones -- which can lead to fractures, or worse -- due to old age (osteoporosis). Swedish pharma company Nova Nordisk, which identified the activity, rushed to ("DRI for joint ownership of a use patent and licensing.
Cases like this illustrate why one of the first things Mashelkar did when he took over C:SIR was to sit together with all the laboratory directors (there are 39) to identify existing patentable content in their knowledge base.
Indian R&D’s thrust so far has been organic synthesis and process development. The strength of companies like Ranbaxy, Lupin, Dr Reddy, Cipla, SOL, Gharda, United Phosphorus, Excel and others has been in process development. While this has been reverse engineering in most cases, totally new processes, leading to international patents, have also been developed.
Specialty chemicals involve difficult process technology, novel catalysts etc. But one can at relatively low capital cost, build a 1.000 to 2,000 tpa plant to achieve global scales. Thus, specialty chemicals have become a playground for many Indian entrepreneurs and laboratories.
Ranbaxy's SLlccess with the complicated synthesis of Ccfaclor has become an industry legend. The story goes that Dr J.M. Khanna, head of R&D at Ranbaxy, went to the US patent office with 18 different processes for Cefaclor, each time failing to prove novelty. Not disheartened, he continued to work at the proolcm, and the 19th time, produced an acceptable solution. All that diligence and hard work is paying ofT. Says an industry observer, "If Ranbaxy can spend Rs40 crore a year today on R&D. it is the money from Cefaclor that they arc ploughing back. Eli Lilly itself buys aoout SI) million worth of Ccfaclor from Ranbaxy."
Eli Lilly, the original inventor of Cefaclor, was impressed by Ranbaxy's abilities to resynthesise and compete with it in the generics market once the drug went off patent. After all, Cefaclor is the biggest selling anti-bacterial today. The result was a joint venture with Ranbaxy. The relationship is strengthening, and today Eli Lilly-Ranbaxy is investing $100 million in manufacturing and marketing under a joint brand name, as well as joint R&D in process development.
IICT is today minting money from process development. It expects to earn close to Rs 17 crore this year from technology fees and sponsored research. That's more than half its budget! The institute has developed numerous processes for agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals and its client list for full technology packages, including process know-how, plant design and performance guarantees reads like the Who's Who of the Indian chemical industry.
Even commodity chemical manufacturer Herdillia Chemicals followed the Strategy of specialty chemical development, under the guidance of well-known chemical engineer M.M. Sharma, FRS. Today, its isobutyl Ibenzene and diphenyl oxide plants compete with giants in the global marketplace.
Having widened their horizons to the global market, Indian entrepreneurs, even small and medium ones, are ready to take big risks on technology development, the gamble is worth it; the rewards are very high if they succeed. Herdillia invested Rs20 crore to 30 crore in process technology five years ago- a move that was considered bold at that time. But, today, R&D efforts are backed by ten times that amount.
For example, even a small Rs50 crore company like Adarsh Chemicals has teamed up with Indian Institute of petroleum(IIP), Dehradun and NCL and is planning to invest Rs200 crore in new technology. Part of the project – cloaked under a blanket of secrecy – is IIP’s patented process on the single-step oxidation of cyclohexane to produce and adipic acid which is being scaled up at Adarsh’s pilot plant near Surat. The foreign collaborator is the well-known international technology vendor, Lummus of the US.
Adipic acid is the crucial intermediate for Nylon 6,6. if successful, IIP and Adarsh will become global players in adipic acid technology. The existing technology, owned by Du Pont, is a two-stage one and has the added disadvantage of using the environmentally-dangerous concentrated metric acid. IIP’s process, developed by Dr. S.K.Gupta and his team, uses a non-poluting catalyst. The importance of the development may be gauged from the fact tat just prior to the signing of the agreement between Lummus, IIP and Adarsh, a senior DuPont executive camped for three days at Dehradun, trying vainly to swing the deal the DuPont way till the last minute.
Dr.V.P. Kamboj, director, CDRI, reinforces the oint about techies’ readiness to take risks. He relates an example, “today we have a partner in drug development –whose name we cannot disclose – who has joined us at the lead molecule stage. Normally, industry wants tie-ups at the much later stage of human clinical trials, where the possibilities of success full drug emerging are much higher. Whereas this collaborator is ready to spend crores of rupees and finance the elaborate and risky process of new drug development. The notable thing is, today he is not even among the top five Indian pharma companies!”
Others – Ranbaxy and Dr. Reddy’s Labs(DRL) among them – have also taken the plunge into basic research, investing crores of rupees in new drug development . the irrepressible Dr Anji Reddy has publicly declared his ambition of making DRL the first Indian company to develop a new drug. Recently, he filed four Indian and international patents for new molecules wit promising levels of anti-cancer and anti-diabetic activity. Trials in the UK are under way currently. If successful, his ambition may be realized. Global pharma companies are negotiating with him for alliances and licensing rights.
One route with less risks but with large benefits. If cleverly exploited, is that of contract research. Contract research means conducting a given experiment or carrying out R&D as per the client’s instructions. Why a particular project is to be undertaken or for what a synthesised molecule is needed is not told, and the follow-up information is also not supplied. This way, MNCS can exploit cheap intellectual labour in India. But Mashelkar championed it in NCL, believing that it would help upgrade project management, delivery schedules, documentation and similar disciplines at NCL. The results are there to be seen. Clients like GE and Du Pont keep coming back. In fact, they are now signing more lucrative joint technology development contracts, with intellectual property rights shared by both.
A similar development occurred at Biocon, a small biotech company (1994-95 turnover: Rs30 crore) based in Bangalore. It started as a IV between an Irish biotech company and CEO Kiran Mazumdar in 1978. From value-added exports, Mazumdar soon shifted to developing skills in solid substrate fermentation. The technology was then closely held by Japanese companies, who ruled the roost in specialty enzymes. Today, Biocon is a significant player in this field, with exports of over $3 million a year. Mazumdar later set up an independent company, Syngene, to exploit her skills in genetic engineering and peptide synthesis. Initially, Syngene synthesised molecules on a contract basis. It has grown already, using skills in fungal products, and today screens its own molecules for therapeutic activity. The result is that Syngene is hotly chasing lead molecules.
At times, a technological adversity can be converted into an opportunity. For example, most catalysts used in chemical processes are highly polluting. With environmental consciousness growing in the West, there is greater and greater demand for' green technologies' - that is, process technologies that are less polluting. Indian expertise in the non-polluting zeolite clay-based catalysts is now paying off, as they increasingly replace the traditional ones. Paul Ratnaswamy and his group at NCL have become a frontline group internationally in zeolite catalysts. NCL and IIP are two labs that are making hay while the sun shines on zeolites.
Again, in the 1960s, thalidomide, given to expectant mothers to bring relief from morning sickness, was discovered to produce horrendous deformities in their babies. Further investigation into this medical tragedy led to the realisation that there are two mirror images of the thalidomide molecule. One has a beneficial effect while the other causes deformities. Thus chiral synthesis, that is, synthesising the correct mirror image of the molecule selectively, became a challenge. Today, Indians have acquired considerable expertise in chiral synthesis. Former director A.V. Ramarao built up a world-class group at IICT, Hyderabad in chiral synthesis.
Similarly, using their biotech expertise, Dr Qazi at the Regional Research Lab (RRL), Jammu and Dr Bhalerao at IICT, Hyderabad have come out with novel fermentation-based enzymatic processes for the chiral synthesis of drugs, work that is attracting attention. Qazi has just signed a contract for transferring the technology to synthesise chirally-pure Naproxen to a Hyderabad-based drug company that is the largest manufacturer of the drug. Enzymes, being themselves able to distinguish between right handed and left handed molecules, selectively catalyse the synthesis of one of them. Enzymatic processes are one route to chiral synthesis, but they require economic production of sufficient quantities of the enzymes. Qazi and Bhalerao's work will be very useful here.
An adverse situation that was converted into an opportunity is that of Gugulipid - a cholesterol-lowering drug developed by CDRI. CDRI'S technology for isolating gugulsterone from a plant resin was passed on to Cipla and a French company. But since the resin is not available now, the French are unable to manufacture the drug. Cipla chairman Yusuf Hamied, an excellent synthetic chemist himself, turned this adversity into advantage by developing the synthetic route for making gugulsterone and patenting it internationally. In the absence of plant material, there is no option but to develop synthetic routes if possible, or develop simpler synthetic analogues and convert them into drugs.
What about exploiting our vast biodiversity - ranging from Himalayan flora and fauna to tropical rainforests? Multinationals have exploited India's plant wealth and developed a number of new drugs, but Indians themselves have not succeeded in doing so. Even the herbal drug industry is plagued by numerous problems like lack of standards, lack of proper technology for growing medicinal plantations and hence lack of appropriate plant material in sufficient quantities. But with an increasing number of people in India and abroad ready to try herbal medicines, the industry is expected to grow from the current Rs800 crore to Rs4,000 crore by 2000 AD. We must take steps to protect the intellectual property of our traditional medicinal systems.
Prof S. S. Handa director of RRL (Jammu-Tawi) and his associates' unsung work in plant-based drugs at RRL, Jammu is very important. They are verifying the claims made in Ayurvedic texts about ailments for which modem medicine has no clear-cut solution yet, such as arthritis, rheumatism, diabetes, liver disorders etc. Once a claim is verified, the formulation can be standardised, the herbs involved can be properly classified and even grown so that it can be marketed reliably . ''Today, the industry largely relies on the bazaar for these plant materials. Whether the species is right, in what condition it is stored, what disease the plant has had, etc, nobody checks. One often sees herbal godowns where rats and other pests have been having a field day," says Handa.
Parallel to its herbal drug programme, RRL is also involved in isolating both the most relevant herb and its active compound from ayurvedic cocktails, so that modem medicines can be developed from them. The results obtained by RRL in immuno-modulators, arthritis, hepatoprotectors, etc have been very encouraging, and there is a possibility that new drugs might be developed. The work being done by this low-profile team in Jammu is not only first-rate but even heroic, when one realises that they have been caught in the midst of political turmoil. Its scientists have even been taken hostage by militants. (They were kept in custody for 46 days before being released in an exchange).
While catalysts and specialty chemicals like drugs, agrochemicals and others have been at the front line of Indian technological development, where are computer software and telecom, an essential part of today's technological revolution at the global level ?
"With all these high-profile computer professionals, Indian industry has not even produced a video game that can be sold worldwide!" sneers one industry observer. Points out another, "All the big business groups in India - Tatas, Birlas, Mafatlals, Mahindras, etc - are in the infotech business. In fact, the Tatas have at least five companies in the field. The absence of an Indian product in the global market implies that traditional Indian businessmen cannot be pioneers in infotech."
Despite phenomenal growth rates, it is a fact that the Indian software industry has largely sold knowledge workers in its body shopping exports, rather than take risks and invest money in product development. Interestingly, it is relative newcomers like Wipro, Ramco and Infosys that have developed products that are making a name in the global market.
Every infotech and communication multinational worth its name is rushing to India to set up software development centres. This is no different from body shopping. But it seems as though it will have secondary positive effects. One of the problems in Indian software product development has been the distance between users and developers. Knowledge and nearness of the market is absolutely essential to come out with a product that will succeed. The R&D arms of MNCS coming to India are thus indirectly bringing the market nearer. Soon we will see individuals coming out of these establishments and setting up their own "garage operations" as start-ups.
Signs of this emerging trend are already visible. A number of small software companies are coming out with niche products. In fact, since body shopping and project exports are manpower-intensive, they can only be done by large software houses. The only way smaller companies can survive is through innovative niche product development. Thus, what happened in Silicon Valley in the US might well repeat itself in India, albeit a quarter-century later. In infotech, the constantly changing technology and market needs allow latecomers to join in the gold rush.
"We have gone through the stages of body shopping, offshore development, India development centres (captive R&D groups dedicated to a client but located in India), product development on contract, etc, to reach a stage where we are developing products of our own. Even now, it is not that all the earlier stages have stopped. However, their relative importance will keep changing," says Dr Sridhar Mitta, president (technology), Wipro Infotech. With a new global partner like Acer in a JV, one will not be surprised if Wipro will be one of the first to design the architecture of systems based on the still-experimental P6 (Intel 686 chip)! Wipro has come out with innovative products such as a Pentium-based symmetric processor, a LAN switch meant for data communication based on the Asymmetric Transfer Mode technology and a remote access LAN server. "The real money is in communication software products where we can make an impact despite being latecomers," comments Ashok Soota, president, Wipro group. The convergence of computers, communication and consumer electronics in multimedia and internet will provide numerous opportunities for the bold and farsighted.
Dr Bishnu Pradhan, executive director, C-DOT, is pleased that the industry is finally turning towards what he has been saying for quite some time about communication software. Having suffered destabilisation at the end of the 1980s at the hands of politicians, and then further shaken up by the opening up of the telecom sector, C-DOT has finally emerged with an aggressive strategy. Pradhan's gameplan is to concentrate on developing telecom software while continuing the development of better and cheaper exchanges. The completion of service checks for the 40,000line C-DOT MAX switch in Bangalore signals that C-DOT's original mission has been more or less accomplished. The challenge now is to develop the software and hardware to make the C-DOT switches ISDN-compatible. ISDN will make a single telephone line capable of carrying voice, fax and computer data. C-DOT is expected to complete this in three years.
C-DOT has also made important advances in developing switches that can provide value-added services like the 1800 toll-free calls, credit card verification etc. The ccs-7 (Common Channel Signalling) recently developed by C-DOT will help separate the switching function from the intelligent functions within a switch. This will make it possible to upgrade its exchanges to provide new value-added services the very next year. Pradhan has not been averse to forging alliances with Telstra, Motorola etc either. C-DOT's switches are still probably the cheapest in the world and Telstra plans to use its rural automatic exchanges to link the scattered communities in Australia. C-DOT is also developing low-cost wireless in local loop telephony, meant for difficult terrain where physical cabling is not cost-effective.
Through its switch technology, C-DOT has earned royalties worth over Rs60 crore. Meanwhile, it is being continuously raided by multinationals for trained personnel- many admit they are the best in telecom in India, with lucrative pay packages. Pradhan is working hard to corporatise C-DOT to gain flexibility in business plans, salaries and become more market savvy.
While Wipro and C-DOT are probably the tip of the iceberg that will surface in the next five years, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is already making waves in the sky. Intelsat, the global satellite communication consortium, has leased II C-band transponders on the Indian communication satellite Insat-2E (to be launched in 1998) that will yield a revenue of over $100 million to the department of space over 10 years. In another area, remote sensing, the painstakingly-built expertise in designing, building and launching Indian Remote Sensing satellites and developing the infrastructure for remote sensing software will make India the lead supplier of remote sensing data to the world market in three years. The alliance with the marketing company, Eosat of the US, is expected to help ISRO achieve this target.
The near-perfect launch of PSLV-D2 last October, if followed by another one in early 1996, will make it possible for ISRO to launch 2.5 to 3 tonne communication satellites in the Low Earth Inclined Orbits. That might come in handy for a host of satellite-based global telecom schemes, including Motorola's Iridium, which can then avail of ISRO'S launch services. Meanwhile, ISRO is quietly negotiating lucrative subsystem supplies to major satellite builders of the world like Hughes, Matra-Marconi, Loral etc. Despite the shock suffered by a debilitating media campaign of innuendo and suspicion in the so-called 'ISRO spy scandal', ISRO'S low-profile scientists and engineers are producing a remarkable hi-tech success story, built painstakingly out of knowledge bricks.
At more perceptible altitudes is another success story in engineering and design in the making. And that is in civilian aircraft design. Indian aerospace engineering, which produced such internationally known engineers as S S Dhawan, R. Narasimha and others, is finally taking the plunge into the lucrative civilian aircraft market. The National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL) in Bangalore has already come out with a prototype of a two-seater training plane, the Hansa, targeted for flying clubs.
Now, NAL has developed a complete design package for a 14-seater aircraft. Named Saras, the aircraft can be configured as an air ambulance, a passenger aircraft, an eight-seater executive plane and so on. There is an estimated demand for about 300 such planes in India over its manufacturing life cycle. A Russian design centre, the Myasishchev Design Bureau, which was in the midst of designing one itself, saw the superiority of the NAL design and teamed up with NAL to complete the package. Russia itself will need around 1,000 such aircraft. Currently NAL director Dr K.N. Raju and his team are looking for industry partners to produce prototypes.
Says Raju, "A similar aircraft produced by the Italians cost over $250 million for development. A liberal estimate of development costs for our design is expected to be $40 million, which is being shared equally by us and the Russians. Each aircraft will give a neat Rsl crore profit for the manufacturers while pricing it at about $3 million, well below all the competing models in the market. CSIR is putting up Rs25 crore and another Rs40 crore needs to be put up by any partner from the private sector. The manufacturing itself will need only RsI70crore." It won't be surprising if an ambitious new entrepreneur emerges soon, for NAL is currently negotiating with a number of them.
Each of these examples of knowledge based businesses are stories in themselves, but the trend, clearly, is that a few techies in business and research are mixing the two into a heady brew. Some businessmen are investing in research while some researchers are becoming businessmen. Mashelkar's provocative slogan, "I want to be known as the first CEO of CSIR Inc" is one side of the coin, while Reddy's ambition to be the first Indian to develop a new drug, is the other side.
The ball has been set rolling. We have not even touched on the developments in other knowledge-based services like education, training, health care, market research, etc, which deserve a story to themselves.
It is already clear to many that a rupee put in well-directed technology development yields many mo' in a fairly short period of time.
Every nation in the newly industrialised fold used cheap labour as the first competitive advantage to climb up the ladder, and are now looking for other niches like quality, basic research and specialisation. For example, Japan has concentrated on automobiles and consumer electronics, Taiwan on personal computers, and South Korea on heavy ~engineering. India can use knowledge-based businesses like specialty chemicals, catalysts, engineering design, telecom and computer software, aerospace technology, biotech etc as its core competence to leapfrog into the industrialised league.
These new technologies have also evolved in the last decade. They can be characterised as technologies in which size does not matter - an innovator can go ahead with a good idea even if not backed by a giant organisation. To that extent, the new technologies have a decentralising effect and are allowing newcomers an entry. Knowledge-based entrepreneurs have identified the opportunity and grabbed it.
A manufacturing advantage based solely on cheap labour hardly lasts long. One soon finds a country that can manufacture even more cheaply. But it is difficult to erode an advantage based on knowledge. What we need is far-sighted entrepreneurs and researchers, and it is heartening to see that India has them in plenty. And they are not restricted to the traditional trading -money lending - manufacturing families that have dominated the business scene till today.
The new wealth
If one is to make money out of knowledge, it should first be acknowledged as property. In the world of Indian R&D today, there are no two opinions on intellectual property and the need for its protection. There is a mad rush towards filing applications for international patents, despite the fact that a US patent costs thousands of dollars to file and to maintain annually. Cipla's Dr Yusuf Hamied, who doggedly cautions against changing the Indian intellectual property rights (IPR) regime, is an exception. But then, Hamied, while advocating the exploitation of various clauses within the WTO framework to make sure that drugs will be available in India at affordable prices, has recently got two international patents himself.
Patent literacy is now on top of the agenda; Indian researchers are learning how to read and write patents. Dr R.A. Mashelkar, director-general of the CSIR, in fact, wants to launch a patent literacy mission. Says N.R. Subbaram, head of CSIR'S patent division and one of the few experts in India, on international technology patenting, "Many are realising that one should read patents before beginning work, so that the novelty of the line of work proposed is clear. You might even get a clue as to which line to pursue. At the same time, one should learn to write patents so that not much is disclosed."
However, even before the IPR regime is changed by law, both Indian researchers and foreign companies have recently formed working relationships, respecting both a high degree of confidentiality and exclusivity in joint research. While it is easy for private companies to form such relationships (as many are doing), it took an agonising time for the CSIR labs to do the same. Can a publicly-funded R&D organisation act as an arm of corporate R&D, was the question. Ranbaxy's Dr Parvinder Singh, whose corporate mission is to transform Ranbaxy into a 'research-driven global pharmaceutical company', comments, "Two years back when we proposed a joint drug development programme with a CSIR lab with exclusive rights to us, it was rejected. Now that Mashelkar has come to head CSIR, things will change very fast."
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
R A Mashelkar--Catalyst for Change
Business India, June 28-July 11, 1999
CEO of CSIR Inc
Under his leadership, 40-odd laboratories of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research have not only undergone a culture change, but are showing what proactive management is all about. In the general atmosphere of despair, R.A. Mashelkar, FRS, has shown that one man can, even now, make a difference
Shivanand Kanavi
"Asking scientists to do industrial research is close to prostitution!" the director of a CSIR laboratory declared at a press conference 10 years ago.
last year CSIR labs earned Rs125 crore from industry.
In 1989 the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, a highly respected R&D centre worldwide, did not own a single US patent.
last year alone CSIR filed about 100 international patents. NCL was at the vanguard.
Tables, charts and computer graphics are eloquent about the money earned from industry, foreign clients contracted, international patents filed, and so on, by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). The quantitative change becomes obvious at a glance. But they do not tell the story, the process. Neither do they indicate if, at some point, this quantitative change has led to a change in quality, a change in culture.
CEO of CSIR Inc
Under his leadership, 40-odd laboratories of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research have not only undergone a culture change, but are showing what proactive management is all about. In the general atmosphere of despair, R.A. Mashelkar, FRS, has shown that one man can, even now, make a difference
Shivanand Kanavi
"Asking scientists to do industrial research is close to prostitution!" the director of a CSIR laboratory declared at a press conference 10 years ago.
last year CSIR labs earned Rs125 crore from industry.
In 1989 the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, a highly respected R&D centre worldwide, did not own a single US patent.
last year alone CSIR filed about 100 international patents. NCL was at the vanguard.
Tables, charts and computer graphics are eloquent about the money earned from industry, foreign clients contracted, international patents filed, and so on, by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). The quantitative change becomes obvious at a glance. But they do not tell the story, the process. Neither do they indicate if, at some point, this quantitative change has led to a change in quality, a change in culture.
Talking about "managing change" is fashionable. A large number of books displayed prominently at airport bookstores for the benefit of travelling businessmen and executives give ready aphorisms on "change management", "managing chaos", and so on. However, they all read like fairy tales, possible only in enabling environments in distant developed economies. They make you feel good for some time, fill you with enthusiasm to tryout the easily digestible, encapsulated pop wisdom. But in no time the ifs and buts butt in. And despair deepens as one re-enters reality before the flight of fancy ends. But, of course, one rationalises and conversations end with familiar justifications: "In a country like India ... "
Under these conditions, the CSIR turnaround has generated considerable optimism in India's science and technology circles, and increasingly among businessmen too. It is an excellent example of change management, in a 50-year-old institution, which could have fossilised and crumbled in the post-1991 environment. Business India visited nine CSIR laboratories in Lucknow, Jammu, Goa, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune, and Dehradun, and talked extensively to businessmen and scientists to bring you this story.
Dr Raghunath A. Mashelkar, director-general of CSIR, speaks with great enthusiasm and optimism in public and in private that India will be one of the hubs of the future global knowledge economy. He showers the audience with a host of catchy slogans. If you didn't know that the man was a distinguished scientist with a Fellowship of the Royal Society (an honour shared by only 35 Indian scientists and engineers in over three centuries), you could easily mistake him for a tacky copywriter. "At times it looks like he is overselling a bit, but look at his accomplishments in turning around CSIR," says Prof M.M. Sharma FRS, who was also his teacher at the University Department of Chemical Technology, Mumbai. "Change is always a product of proactive leadership and in India, where personalities matter so much, leadership is even more crucial," he adds. Naturally the story of change in CSIR is the story of Mashelkar's leadership.
"At a recent meet on R&D organised by an MNC he lifted up everybody's spirits, including that of international participants, with his vision," says Dr pradip, a well-known materials scientist from Tata Consultancy Services. "From anyone else it would have sounded like bombast, but Mashelkar has a good track record and there is absolute conviction in what he says. And that enables him to carry others with him."
Mashelkar understands the use of oft-repeated slogans and symbolism very well. He started his campaign to globalise Indian R&D and thereby elevate its quality and competitiveness during his tenure as director of National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune. Though CSIR labs are not supposed to concentrate on pure science, a number of them have been producing a large number of high- quality scientific papers. For example, NCL alone used to produce over 250 papers (now close to 350), while the whole of Indonesia produces about 70. Mashelkar however knew that global knowledge markets do not pay much attention to research papers but they do if you have patents in critical areas.
"At times it looks like Mashelkar is overselling a bit, but his accomplishments in turning around CSIR, are impressive" says Prof M.M. Sharma FRS, who was his teacher.
So he convinced his colleagues at NCL that, while the output of the laboratory in terms of science was excellent, it had not staked its claim in technology markets with patents. In fact, NCL then did not have a single US patent.
Mashelkar advised his colleagues, many of them distinguished scientists on their own standing, to scan patent databases before they started a research project, to make sure that they weren't reinventing the wheel. He also asked them to scan their papers for any patentable (novel, non-obvious, commercially exploitable) result and file a patent before sending it for publication. It was hard initially, because it is research publications that bring peer recognition in science and not patents. So he replaced the old adage in science "publish or perish" with a new slogan "patent, publish, and prosper". He tom-tommed it constantly and today it has caught on all over CSIR (see box). A new body NCL Research Foundation funded through donations gave away medallions to all US patent holders every year. A healthy competitive spirit developed, especially between the catalysis and polymer groups headed by two eminent scientists, Dr Paul Ratnasamy and Dr S. Sivram respectively. A few specialists were trained in writing patents. After all, patent-writing is an art where you give away the least amount of information while at the same time covering the flanks of your work so that others cannot easily bypass your patent. In the last five years CSIR has filed about 350 international patents and NCL is the leader in US patent applications from India.
Today Mashelkar is spearheading a campaign for patent literacy. "I compliment CSIR for creating an intellectual climate supportive of the early passage of the bill to amend the Patents Act," said Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, on 15 January 1999.
"While the team at the helm of CSIR has helped realise the goal, he as an individual has led them as one from within them. This approach makes all the difference,” comments Mukesh Ambani, Reliance Industries
That is a handsome compliment because only five years back there was deep opposition to amending the law both in Parliament and outside. A key factor that influenced this turnaround was CSIR'S victory in the turmeric case. At one stroke the turmeric case showed that the IPR system works if backed by proper documentation. That those advocating a change in patent laws are not necessarily "agents of multinationals". That urgent steps should be taken to spread patent literacy in scientific and business circles. That it is a two-way street and India's knowledge base, be it traditional or modern, requires protection too. At once Mashelkar became a swashbuckling national hero who" rescued haldi from Western biopirates".
Today the battle over patenting has been won. For example, two years back a brilliant young molecular biologist from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, came to Mashelkar for advice. He had patented an innovation, published the paper, and a US biotech company had come to negotiate the commercial terms for exploiting his patent. Mashelkar was overjoyed because the same scientist in 1995 had argued passionately and boldly about keeping science away from commerce.
However, Mashelkar is not complacent. "Demands change as time moves on. Now, there will be a greater emphasis on exploitation of patents, and income generated from them - and not merely on the number of patents." Even forward-looking entrepreneurs like Parvinder Singh and Anji Reddy hail him for his work in this regard.
"In fact one of his greatest contributions to CSIR is to inculcate the culture of patenting. Many years before we filed patents from our research foundation, it was NCL which was at the forefront of filing process patents licensing to big multinationals like Akzo. He was a kind of inspiration for me and always used to say that we should stand in the forefront in technology and file patents in developed countries. To that extent, I must admit that he has not only inspired scientists in CSIR to create wealth by harnessing intellectual property, but was also inspiration for all of us in the industry," says Reddy.
"To evaluate the contribution of Dr Mashelkar you have to look at the goals he had set for CSIR in 1996 to be achieved by the year 2001. I would say Mashelkar has set up very high standards to achieve, but he is well on his way to meeting some of these," says Singh. "He has increased the awareness in the Indian scientific community towards patent-worthy innovations. He has also successfully defended our traditional intellectual wealth in the challenge to patents filed abroad," adds he.
Spreading its wings
Patents, however, are really a small part of a larger goal of turning India into a global R&D platform. But even that has required a change in the mindset. CSIR has had an open culture. So nothing passes through just because the director-general says so. In fact, individual directors have a lot of power and can act as satraps. It is extremely important for the top man to carry his 40 directors with him. What does globalising CSIR mean? Should publicly funded Indian R&D become an adjunct of multinational corporate R&D? While celebrating NCL'S golden jubilee earlier this year, several senior scientists who have retired from CSIR -like B.D. Tilak, L.K. Doreswamy, and A. V. Ramarao expressed the fear that NCL might become "a lab on rent" for MNCS
Poly-Mashelkar
Maharashtrians are prone to add kar to a profession, a characteristic, or a place and derive a surname out of it. So, recently, Mashelkar has been nicknamed Patentkar, Polymerkar, and so on by his compatriots. However, these names are inadequate as they reflect only some facets . of a multifaceted personality. His enthusiasm for India and its future is infectious. In fact, only his track record and utter conviction in it makes it genuine rather than c1icheridden hyperbole. "How can I not be an optimist? I am what I am because of India," he says to sceptics. The truth in those words only becomes clear when you look at his childhood and the struggle that he has gone through to reach the present heights.
Raghunath Anant Mashelkar was born on 1 January 1943 in Mashel a small village in south Goa. The lone child almost died of smallpox when he was a little over a year old. With no land and Mumbai beckoning with means of livelihood in the difficult postwar years, the family joined thousands of others from Konkan who migrated to the city. A couple of years later Mashelkar lost his father at the age of six. His barely literate mother, Anjanitai Mashelkar, brought up her son with great courage, grit, and hunger for education. She drove Mashelkar forward at decisive moments in his life, when he could have easily succumbed to the overwhelming odds and given up.
The family lived in a crowded one-room chawl, sharing it with other migrant families in Deshmukh Galli in Khetwadi near Girgaum. His maternal uncle got him admitted into West Khetwadi Upper Primary School, a Marathi-medium municipal school, where he was a consistent topper. When it was time for him to enter senior school (Std VIII), the high schools nearby needed Rs21 as an entrance fee. His mother, who was trying to provide for the family by doing all kinds of odd jobs in nearby households, could not rustle up the amount. It looked like curtains for Mashelkar's academic career. But she didn't give up and finally managed to borrow it from a friend, who was also working as a household help. Mashelkar often publicly recounts that struggle for Rs21 . But by then a month had passed and admissions to many schools had closed. He eventually joined Union High School in Girgaum.
"Poverty is not an abstraction or a statistic for me," says Mashelkar. "I walked barefoot till I was 12. I remember that when we had weekly tests in school on Saturdays, and we had to carry our own answer paper, which cost 3 paise. One had to always wonder where that money would come from the next week." For this reason he almost gave up his studies at Std XI. Just then the Gomanthak Maratha Samaj came to his assistance with a modest scholarship.
Unable to have either privacy or space in the chawl, he studied for his matriculation under the streetlights of Chowpatty. The dazzling grades he got at the Std XII exams despite all the odds, standing 11 th in the board, were the turning point in his academic life. Not because of the marks themselves - after all, he was always used to excelling at studies - but in terms of the number of people who suddenly came forward to help him pursue his education further. That is how he did not have a particularly difficult time getting Rs200 for his college admission. Meanwhile, the Sir Dorab Tata Trust selected him for their coveted scholarship and considerably reduced his hardship. He fondly remembers that the trust's personnel even helped him improve his English language skills, public speaking, and so on. When he received the JRD Tata Award for corporate leadership recently, Mashelkar publicly expressed his gratitude to the Tata Trust. "Dr Mashelkar's vast knowledge and standing is deceptively hidden by his great humility," says Ratan Tata.
After two years at Jaihind College, Mashelkar chose to enter the relatively new field of chemical engineering at Bombay University's Department of Chemical Technology. When he finished his BChem with flying colours and wanted to take up a job to ease the financial situation at home, his mother asked him a simple question: "What is the next degree in this subject?" And thus Mashelkar started and finished one of the quickest PhDs in chemical engineering. He was offered fellowships at some universities in North America, but a young professor called Manmohan Sharma, who had just returned after a brilliant innings at Cambridge, persuaded him to stay. That was the beginning of a legendary guru-shishya relationship. Today in chemical engineering Sharma and Mashelkar's names are always taken in the same breath.
After his PhD his mother encouraged him to go abroad and excel in his chosen field and there followed an illustrious career at the University of Salford, UK, where he established a first-rate group in polymer engineering and carried out pioneering work in the field. He also came out of his guru's shadows in mass transfer and charted a new path. A few years back he presented a new paradigm at his Dankwerts' Memorial Lecture at Cambridge, where he championed "borderless chemical engineering". In short, he pointed out that future breakthroughs are going to come through sharing of ideas and techniques between various disciplines. "Borderless", a pet word in his vocabulary, also summarises his personality very well.
In 1975 Y. Nayudamma, the then director-general of CSIR who had a brief from Mrs Gandhi to entice some of the best Indian brains working abroad, sold him the idea of coming back to India and joining the National Chemical Laboratory. And thus started an intense 23-year commitment to CSIR and another chapter in his career as a polymer scientist, R&D manager, and visionary leader. It eventually won him widespread international recognition, including the prestigious Fellowship of the Royal Society. Unfortunately, health reasons kept that gritty woman, Anjanitai Mashelkar, away from the elaborate induction ceremony in London where Mashelkar signed the register of the Royal Society, which still carries the muchrevered (and hence laminated) page 9 that carries the signature of Isaac Newton.
The whole debate would not have taken place 10 years ago. After all, NCL'S external earnings in hard currency were negligible then. Today it earns about $4 million annually, which constitutes 80 per cent of its industrial earnings. It has successfully networked with a number of global corporations. Several other labs are following NCL'S example and globalising their clientele (see table). "Though one has to carefully allocate resources between contract research and original work, criticism that NCL is selling R&D cheaply to MNCS at the Indian taxpayers' expense is unjustified. NCL has no more than 10 foreign clients; its Indian clients number over 100! It is a different issue that Indian industry, which is still busy reverse-engineering, may not be able to absorb some of the sophisticated work done in NCL in polymers and catalysis. But that's not its fault. Moreover, NCL has never sold R&D by 'man-hours' - only by 'brain hours', counters Mashelkar.
"When a GE team came to NCL to negotiate some pilot projects in 1992-93 they had come via Russia. When they saw the sum quoted by NCL for contract research they said that they could buy a whole R&D lab in Russia for that kind of money. I said, 'Go ahead and buy a Russian lab but come back to NCL if you want world class quality.' GE was finally convinced and, since then, has not looked back. In fact, NCL charges foreign clients at least five times what it does Indian clients. So I do believe that, without outpricing ourselves, we are getting outstanding results," he adds.
Cutting-edge work for foreign clients has many intangible benefits. It raises the quality of research of the whole lab. For example, GE ran its prestigious Six Sigma training course for NCL. Several scientists got training that they would otherwise never have got. Even contract research for foreign clients requires the use of cutting-edge biology and chemistry - no 'me too' products and processes. Time, quality, price, and delivery are all internationally benchmarked. CSlR is creating a cadre of top-class professionals who will serve Indian industry with highest level of skills. Ashok Ganguli, former R&D director of Unilever plc and current chairman of ICI India, completely supports Mashelkar's plan to globalise Indian R&D.
"I would say Dr Mashelkar has set up very high standards to achieve, but he is well on his way to meeting some of these," says Dr Parvindar Singh, Ranbaxy Laboratories
Spreading its wings worldwide has not been easy. Mashelkar has taken extra pains to achieve this. When he took over as the youngest director of NCL 10 years ago, he said in his inaugural speech to the staff that his ambition was to convert it into the "International Chemical Laboratory". As usual, he started turning the catchy slogan into a reality by hard-selling NCL to a number of multinationals. He has since used everything at his command to market CSlR globally, including his own impeccable scientific credentials. For example, in 1992, he visited GE'S corporate R&D at Schenectady in upstate New York to deliver a scientific talk on polymer engineering. He had, however, asked his contacts at GE to gather some business development people as well. The seminar soon became a presentation of NCL'S capabilities, including a pitch on a US patent obtained by NCL in "solid state poly-condensation" - a topic of interest to GE, which is the world leader in polycarbonates.
The one-hour seminar stretched to two. It then led to an extended lunch, where more executives joined. The lunch was followed by meetings with senior vps in the afternoon. And in the evening he had to change his flight plans for more serious talks. One of the vp’s exclaimed, "You speak our (corporate) language. Nobody in publicly funded labs in the US seems to do so." Today GE'S corporate R&D considers its relationship with NCL as its most successful external relationship. It is a partnership in joint technology development and not "a lab on rent.”
The time is ripe to strike more such partnerships. Globally R&D and innovation have become a high-risk game for all high-technology corporations. R&D is becoming very expensive and is yielding diminishing returns when carried out under a single roof. On the other hand, without innovation and new technology, one can lose one's business position very quickly. This dilemma has led to networking, outsourcing, strategic alliances, and partnerships in R&D. None of the Indian labs is in a position to develop a full-scale globally competitive technology by itself and then license it worldwide. Partnerships, where they assume a junior position initially, can help them catch up with the rest of the world. So it is indeed a win-win situation. After GE several other MNCS like DuPont and Smith Kline Beecham have come to various CSIR for R&D tie-ups.
Soon after he was appointed director-general in 1995, Mashelkar said in an interview, "I would like to be known as the first CEO of CSIR mc." In effect, he was voicing his intense desire to turn the network of 40 disparate laboratories spread all over the country into a highly focused, goal-oriented, well networked organisation doing "research as business" and in the most businesslike manner. Within a short period of four years he has achieved his goal to a great extent.
"He always used to say that we should stand in the forefront of technology and file patents in developed countries. I must admit that he has not only inspired scientists in CSIR to create wealth by harnessing intellectual property, but also all of us in the industry," says Dr Anji Reddy
The sweeping economic changes in the 1990s have hit publicly funded R&D institutions globally. Budget cuts, scrambling for funds from industry, corporatisation, privatisation, and even closure have been the nightmares of any R&D manager in the world. Organisations in the UK, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia which are similar in structure to CSIR have had a tumultuous decade. Even corporate R&D is in great turmoil worldwide. In India in the last few years, Hoechst (Hoechst Marion Roussel), Hindustan Lever, and Ciba-Geigy (Novartis) have either closed down their R&D labs or sold them. In this context one could safely say that CSIR is introducing cultural changes, which are pioneering not only in India but also globally.
The new businesslike approach is palpable. For example, annual reports of government institutions are not particularly known either for readability or transparency. The bulk of one report is repeated the next year, thereby making it opaque for anyone to figure out what actually was done in the current year that was different from last year. The annual report of the Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehradun, reads differently. The achievements of the last year are unambiguously stated with clear graphics. "We believe in 'delta reports' (delta is the mathematical symbol for incremental change)", says T.S.R. Prasad Rao who was the director of the lab till recently.
In another instance it was common in the 1970s and 1980s for many a science chieftain to announce a "breakthrough" for every two-bit import substitution done. If all the claims made by our government-run R&D laboratories about breakthroughs in technology were true, then India by now would have been an economic and technological superpower. Today Paul Ratnasamy, director of NCL and an internationally recognised authority on catalysis, is tight-lipped about the work done by his scientists even after they have got US patents.
Incidentally, this approach has not led to a decrease in science at CSIR. In fact, the quality has gone up. According to an internal study, even though the number of scientific papers published between 1995 and 1998 remained more or less the same (1,500-1,600 every year), the citation index, which shows how many others are quoting ones paper internationally, has gone up by 60 per cent in the same period.
"Dr Mashelkar has brought about a new direction to the management of scientific institutions in India by making their research user oriented with economic benefits. This is path-breaking. While the team at the helm of CSIR has helped realise the goal, he as an individual has led them as one from within them. This approach makes all the difference," comments Mukesh Ambani.
Molecular hunt
CSIR is quietly starting an ambitious drug discovery programme that capitalises on the rich biodiversity and millennia-old traditional systems of medicine, using the most modern equipment and methods that are leagues ahead of what Indian industry is currently equipped with. Today CSIR has a large number of laboratories specialising in chemistry and biology. Moreover, out of the 13 new drugs discovered in the last 50 years in India, 10 have resulted from the efforts of CSIR labs, thereby generating a certain level of confidence. The bane of CSIR labs however, has been lack of networking and synergising among themselves. In the past many a director has treated his lab as a fiefdom in itself and there have been cases of serious internecine rivalry leading to fragmentation of skills and replication of facilities.
Now 20 CSIR labs spread allover India are being networked for new drug discovery. Others outside the CSIR fold have also been co-opted. One example is Arya Vaidya Shala at Kottakkal, Kerala, which is well known for its expertise in Ayurveda. Similarly other traditional systems of herbal medicine like Siddha and Rasayana are also being explored. The rich biodiversity of India in terms of plants, fungi, bacteria, marine organisms, and insects are being systematically scoured for novel molecules that might
If CSIR'S New Drug Discovery programme succeeds, it will be an example of success on a shoestring budget. After all, a leading pharmaceutical company like Glaxo-Wellcome spends more than 10 times CSIR'S entire budget for forty odd laboratories!
Sticking the neck out
Within months of becoming director-general of CSIR in mid-199S, Mashelkar took an extraordinary step. He put down in black and white what he aimed to achieve by 2001 (see table), thereby making CSIR vulnerable to criticism if the goals were not met. In bureaucratic Delhi, where the watchword is 'cover-your-back', this new secretary to the Government of India broke all rules and actually stuck his neck out! But he was not a general full of bluster without an army. In fact he set out to visit all the 40 labs within three months of taking over, a task not carried out by any recent DG in his entire term! Individual labs soon followed with their own concrete 2001 strategy statements.
CSIR knows that, in the current conditions, it has to fight for every rupee and dollar and see to it that its old clients keep coming back while new ones are added. That's why, in another pioneering move, it is conducting a meticulous customer satisfaction survey among its industrial clients to review its own weaknesses. In an effort to improve systems, more than 10 labs have already received ISO 9000 certification.
It is clear that, while CSIR has definitely moved forward on patenting, it is definitely lagging far behind in its targets for 2001 (see table). So, is Mashelkar ready to reset some of his targets? "The context decides the content. 'CSIR 2001' was visualised in the context of rapid anticipated industrial growth. That has not happened. In fact, industry has had a bad recession in the last two years. This has affected us. Although the percentage of income from industry has risen to the desired figure, absolute figures have not been reached," he says.
"The foreign earnings are rising and have come close to $4 million, but any further rise will take time. For example, if the right manpower were available within CSIR, we would earn our targeted $40 million by 2001 from GE itself. So we are paying a lot of attention to recruiting bright young people. Moreover, once the drug research programme takes off, there will be considerable earnings at each milestone reached during drug development.
"Infrastructure projects and especially a large number of bridges are going to be built in the country. CSIR labs like the Central Road Research Institute, the Central Building Research Institute, and SERC can form a consortium and offer design and other consultancy,” says Dr Vijay Gupchup.
"However, overemphasis on balancing the laboratory budget has to give way to balancing the national budget. For example, when CSIR brought 270 tanneries back into action in Tamil Nadu through green technologies, it saved an industry with a turnover of Rs2,000-crore-plus, but the direct benefit to CSIR in monetary terms was not even Rs5 crore. So far CSIR has been technology-centred. However, now we are launching a Leather Vision 2010 and driving the industry towards that. Similarly, CSIR will become the nucleus of future civilian aircraft industry. We have made a modest beginning with a Hansa licensed to Taneja Aerospace, and we are now taking up the 14-seater multipurpose aircraft Saras. In less than a year from now, the first prototype will roll out. We are putting in our own money with HAL and Pratt & Whitney as partners. The same can be said about CSIR launching the IPR movement, protection of India's traditional knowledge base movement, and so on."
The road to the future
"Do you need all the 40 labs or should some non-performing ones be closed down?" That's a question Mashelkar is often asked. "I do not have 'nonperforming assets' in the normal sense of the word. My assets are not plant and machinery. We might have a few non-performing brains. Though we need to be slim and trim, I do not think the answer is closing down labs. What we need to do first is provide leadership to the underperforming labs."
He illustrates his assertion with the example of the Central Mining Research Institute, in the badlands of Bihar, right in the midst of the Dhanbad mafia. Five years ago it was at the bottom in all respects and could have easily been written off. A new director Dr B.B. Dhar came along and turned it around in five years. Today it is in the top 10 in terms of earnings from industry and recently won the CSIR technology award, beating better equipped engineering labs.
At a systemic level Mashelkar's emphasis is on networking, echoing Sun Micro Systems' by now famous declaration "the network is the computer, not individual servers and other components". Projects and new initiatives are being taken up which involve many labs. The New Drug Discovery Initiative is one such involving about 20 labs (see box: molecular hunt). Over 500 scientists are involved in searching for new molecules which can become drugs and agrochemicals. "Similarly, the National Metallurgical Laboratory, the National Aerospace Laboratory, the Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute, and the Structural Engineering Research Centre (Chennai) put together have more expertise than any foreign consultant in the matter of residual life assessment of power plants," says Mashelkar.
"Infrastructure projects and especially a large number of bridges are going to be built in the country. CSIR labs like the Central Road Research Institute, the Central Building Research Institute, and SERC can fmm a consortium and offer design and other consultancy," says Dr Vijay Gupchup, a structural engineer and former Pro Vice Chancellor of Bombay University.
Die-hard optimist
He and his team are showing that science administration is not a cushy position for a retiring scientist; that it needs hardcore management skills. For the first time, after five decades of independent India R&D management has made its appearance as an organisational culture. It involves harmonising short-term and long-term goals, and encouraging innovation and creativity, while insisting on deliverability and targets, handling temperamental scientists on the one hand and hard-nosed businessmen, bankers, and bureaucrats on the other. Naturally it surprised nobody when vice president Krishan Kant presented the JRD Tata Award for Corporate Leadership to Mashelkar in February 1999, even though earlier recipients had been businessmen and bankers: Aditya Birla, Deepak Parekh, and Narayana Murthy. It was a recognition of the fact that CSIR mc had arrived, along with its first CEO.
No wonder the Indian scientific community has chosen him to preside over the first Indian Science Congress of the new millennium, on 3 January 2000. There is no doubt that it will be different, because Mashelkar has left his indelible mark of optimism and businesslike approach on whatever he has taken up.
"I believe in the lilies-in-the-pond story. That is, we should look at the rate of change to see the future. Let us say that lilies double every day and there is one lily in a pond and it takes 30 days to fill the pond. Then on the 29th day the pond will be half full, on the 28th one-fourth full, on the 27th one-eighth full, on the 26th only one sixteenth full, and so on. But if you see the rate of growth then you will see that soon it will be full," he replies to his critics.
Managing change requires clear goals, lucid argumentation, empathy, doggedness, faith in your team, optimism, and the ability to enthuse others with your dreams and convert them into collective dreams. Mashelkar is doing just that. The boy who had stars in his eyes on the sands of Chowpatty is today filling others with his dream of an India that will be a significant player in global knowledge economics. In the prevailing gloom and cynicism he personifies hope.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Tech Pioneers
Business India, September 17-30, 2001
Beyond valuations
Indians in Silicon Valley aren't famous just for the big bucks they made as hi-tech entrepreneurs - quite a few have made an impact as technology pioneers
Shivanand Kanavi
Indians in the United States are down in valuations, but not in value added. Business India celebrated the success of Indian hi-tech entrepreneurs in the US in a special issue at the start of this year. Many of the Silicon Valley millionaires then mentioned fell sharply in net worth after the Nasdaq index crashed from 5,000 points in March last year to less than 2,000 points in August this year. But the downturn also separates the men from the boys. We introduce here three individuals who have pioneered technology and entrepreneurship in diverse fields such as fibre optics, tunable lasers, digital cinematography, optics, biotechnology, microprocessor design and broadband communications and networking.
Through the fibre glass
With his hearty laughter and easygoing nature, the ebullient Dr Narinder Singh Kapany reminds you of a neighbourhood innkeeper. But his appearance misleads. Kapany, at 74, has launched a start-up, K20ptronics, which makes tunable lasers and other components for optical networking. The firm hopes to commercialise products based on state-of-the-art Dense Wave Division Multiplexing technology, patented by Kapany. However, not many people know that Kapany also launched what was perhaps the first hitech Indian start-up in the US in 1960 - when Silicon Valley's poster boy, Sabeer Bhatia, was not even born.
Kapany's unassuming manner does not indicate that he had demonstrated, for the first time SO years ago, that light could be sent through glass fibre. His path-breaking project, as a PhD student at Imperial College in London, led to his being called the "father of fibre optics". "From my high-school days, the idea of bending light around the corner was rattling in my brain," he says. "When I was at Imperial College in 1951 to take an advanced course in technical optics, I discussed it with my professor, who added some ideas of his own and took it to the Royal Society, which gave me a scholarship to do a PhD."
Why the fuss about bending the path of light? The reason is that light normally travels in a straight line. But when light moving through air enters another medium, such as water or glass, part of it bends and is transmitted, while the rest is reflected. When the angle of incidence is more than a certain critical angle, light gets totally reflected at the interface. Thus, if light has entered a totally internally reflecting pipe, it will be transmitted along the pipe, even if the pipe is bent into various contortions. British scientist John Tyndall had shown in the 19th century that light can travel through a jet of water, even if it's curved. This effect is used in fountains, in which a coloured light source at a fountainhead gives the impression that different coloured water is springing from the fountain.
However, nobody had succeeded in using glass fibre to transmit light and images. There was even the fear that even if it were possible to pass light through the medium, the signal might suffer a loss on the way and not come out at the other end of the fibre. But Kapany was bent on trying just that.
Born in 1927 in Moga, Punjab, Kapany was brought up in Dehradun where his father had settled after retiring from the Royal Air Force. Armed with a BSc in physics, Kapany joined the local ordnance factory. Here he gained experience in designing and making optical instruments. In 1951, Kapany got the chance to study optics at the University of London, and grabbed it.
Testing his ideas in a laboratory experiment, however, was not easy. He had to get glass fibre drawn. So he went to the then famous Pilkington Glass Company, where he learned how to draw glass fibre to make glass fabric such as fibreglass. The optical quality of the glass was not important to the firm at all. "I took some optical glass (optical glass is pure glass with no bubbles or any kind of impurity) and requested the company to draw some fibre from it. I also told them what I was going to use it for, and they humoured me," recalls Kapany. However, what Pilkington sent a few months later were spools of fibre, made of green glass meant for beer bottles, which was very fragile and almost opaque. "I spent months making bundles of fibre and trying to shine light at one end to see if I could see it at the other end, but no light was coming out. That was because it was not optical glass. So, I had to cut the bundle to short lengths and use strong light from a carbon arc source and finally I was able to demonstrate it in 1952-53," he recalls.
By 1955, Kapany completed his doctorate and was all set for a return to India. However, the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester in the US drew him. He decided to go to the US for "one year", and this eventually stretched to nearly 50 years. After Rochester, he went to the Illinois Institute of Technology near Chicago to head the Optics Department. "I did a lot of exciting work there for four years, but did not want to live in Chicago, he says, "So, I came to California and started my first company in 1960 called Optics Technology."
Lasers were hot technology at that time. Charles Townes had just demonstrated a Ruby Laser and Ali Javan was building the first helium-neon laser in Bell Labs. Kapany demonstrated that Ruby Lasers could be used for eye surgery. "I made lasers for eye surgery and optical filters and other instrumentation. I took it public in 1967. They were crazy times like we had here in the Valley last year. We were very successful,” recalls Kapany.
In 1973, Kapany started another company called Kaptron, built it up and sold it to AMP. This made optical connectors for FDDI (fibre distributed data interface) "I stayed there 10 years as an AMP fellow and developed a number of new technologies and products for them. I left them a year-and-a-half ago and started the present company, K2Optronics. Last year we got two rounds of funding, totalling $42 million. We are making DWDM components, tunable lasers and so on. We specify what we need and buy the chips and produce very high quality lasers for Metropolitan and Access networks. We have some cutting-edge special designs for lasers, which is patented technology. We have a fairly aggressive programme,” says Kapany about his latest venture.
How does he view the multi-billion dollar industry his inventions have spawned? "In every place a number of friends come up and say accusingly, 'see what you have done,” he guffaws. Kapany has taught in Stanford, Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, and has published over 100 research papers, besides holding over 125 patents and four books. Besides optics, Kapany is interested in promoting Sikh heritage and culture. His collection of Sikh art has done the rounds in several museums around the world. He is also a patron of the Sikh Foundation in the Silicon Valley, which he founded in 1967. He has generously donated to academia to create a chair in Sikh studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara and a chair for optoelectronics at UC Santa Cruz.
Besides playing with light, Kapany's hobby is sculpture, and he has had several exhibitions of his work. Kapany visits India almost every year and is a keen observer of the fibreoptics scene here.
Seamless vision
One would think Bala Manian, who lost an eye in childhood in a ghastly accident while playing with a sharp compass from his school geometry box, is limited in his vision. But that would be only physically true. He is probably one of the most versatile entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley. Digital cinematography, optical imaging, bioinfomatics and biomedical instrumentation are his playgrounds. In the last 20 years, he has created seven successful start-ups in as many different fields of technology. Manian who is a mechanical engineer by training, is the closest one gets to an 18th century French encyclopaedist in a Valley full of frenetic people with narrow vision and a QSQT - quarter-se-quarter tak - approach to life.
When Business India met him at his home in the Valley, he was preparing to visit India and speak to biologists and computer science experts here on the new opportunities in creating an information infrastructure for biological discovery. "Today, by the term bioinfomatics, is understood genome sequencing and protein sequencing. Actually it is much more than that. It is pattern recognition. But there are too many people who talk the talk and very few who walk the walk," says Manian, who cannot suffer shallow conversationalists. "I will see if I can interest some people in it. It needs a confluence of understanding, of data mining, pattern recognition, clustering algorithms and biology. The cost advantage of doing this in India is clear to everybody. But I have been away from India for 35 years and 1 call myself an NRI - Non Relevant Indian. For me to assume that just because I am of Indian origin, I know what needs to be done in India in the sphere of policy formulation, is presumptuous. As it is, there are too many people going there and pontificating. However, what needs to be done technologically is very clear to me."
"I want to illustrate that even though I am a mechanical engineer, I did the whole cell analysis. I did not have biology background, but I did not hesitate. People need to shed fear. Also, they need to focus on what they can do better, since there are so many things one could do. The window of time that is available to you in this life is small. Fads come and go, but when it comes to science, the only way to succeed is hard work. If I can make these three points, then my trip would have been worthwhile," he says.
Manian's understanding of novel technologies and their possible commercial exploitation is legendary. In 1978, when he first moved to Silicon Valley, Eugene Kleiner of Kleiner Perkins, the best-known venture capital firm in the Valley, asked him to be a consultant for the firm. When ICICI started the venture capital firm, TDICI, its chairman N. Vaghul, who is Manian's elder brother, asked him to advise TDICI on which ventures to invest in biotechnology.
Manian studied physics in Loyola College, Chennai, and graduated in mechanical engineering (instrumentation) from the Madras Institute of Technology in 1967. He wanted to set up a business, but one of his professors advised him to apply to the University of Rochester to study optics. "But Rochester was more interested in laser physics and physical optics than the engineering aspects. Hence, soon after getting my MS, I shifted to Purdue University for my PhD and became the first graduate student in engineering optics," he says. However, Rochester beckoned him after his PhD to set up engineering optics there and he spent the next four years in Rochester. Meanwhile, he got involved in industrial consulting for Spectra Physics, a Silicon Valley based firm and developed the first portable laser barcode reader for supermarkets. Manian also did a lot of work for the US spy satellite community in Washington on digital imaging. Besides establishing Manian as a name to be reckoned with in optics, Rochester also helped him get his soul mate. He married Tasneem, a Pakistani pediatrician and both moved to the Silicon Valley in 1978.
At that time, the Star Wars films from Hollywood were gaining immense popularity and set a new dimension in the quality of special effects. Having heard of Manian's reputation in digital optics, George Lukas, director of the Star Wars series and founder of Industrial Light and Magic, approached him to develop new digital special effects technology. That led to Pixar. Manian developed the first three-colour input-output device to take live scenes, digitise them, put special effects, and put them back on film. These effects were used in Indiana Jones-The Last Crusade, The Return of the Jedi and The Adventures ot Young Sherlock Holmes. The Motion Picture Academy, which awards Oscars in Hollywood, honoured Manian with a special award for his technical contribution to digital cinematography during the 1999 Oscar ceremony.
Manian goes to the roots of a technology, sees its possible applications elsewhere, and does not see any borders in his way. This ability to cross boundaries took him into medical imaging. "In those days, CT scan and MRI images had enormous depth in terms of dynamic range. But doctors had to take photographs from CRT monitors, which had poor resolution," he says. "I took the technology that I had developed for Lucas' films and for the army for digital reconnaissance satellites and developed the first laser film recorder for medical imaging. I worked with Kodak on that. I took digital images and printed them directly on film without going through the CRT, so all intermediate degradation in image quality was avoided."
"At the time, I was approached by a new start-up called Adobe, to see if I could apply it in the printing industry. But then Cannon came up with a laser printer, so I saw no point in getting into it," he recalls, "So I focused on medical applications, In 1980 I started Digital Optics Corporation and that was acquired in 1984 by Matrix, which was later acquired by Bayer-Agfa, Gene Kleiner told me that time: 'This is not your first or last idea, so you should go ahead and sell the company: He opened up doors for me, I provided venture capitalists with free consulting. Within two years I found something else to do. I had two ideas in life sciences, and thus started two companies simultaneously. One was Molecular Dynamics, which developed the most successful product, called storage phosphor technology, which is used in radiography. It used a radioactively-labelled phosphor in radioimmunoassay, animal studies of drugs, and also in genetics as a marker. The other company was called Lumisys. It did the opposite of what I did in Digital Optics. I knew wideband communications was coming, so community hospitals, which do not have radiology experts should be able to digitise x-ray photographs and send them to experts through modems. Lumisys quickly captured the market for film digitisers. This is called telemedicine today. Lumisys went public in 1995 and Kodak acquired it in 2000. Molecular Dynamics, which had gone public in 1993, was acquired in 199R by Amersham-Pharmacia Biotech."
Bala started Biometric Imaging in 1993, which was subsequently acquired by Becton Dickinson. Biometric Imaging's technology can make thousands of measurements in a blood sample.
In 1999, Manian came across a technology from MIT and Berkeley (the original work was done at Bell Labs) relating to nanocrystals, which showed that when very small semiconductor crystals developed some very interesting optical properties - they emit coloured light when light is shone on them, just like dyes do. However, while dyes bleach in a short time, nanocrystals do not. This property makes them useful as markers in studying a biological process in situ. "We can send them inside a cell and see what is happening - did the gene get activated by what I am doing, is there a message there, am I able to detect RNA? Is it expressing cytokine, (a small molecule that plays a role in cell-to-cell communication)? If I put a cytokine, is it activating the cell? Now I can put thousands of them in a small bead, which is only two microns (micron is a thousandth of a millimetre) in size, and use it as a sort of barcode and then follow that individual bead. I can uniquely identify that head," says an excited Manian. And that marked the birth of a hot new start-up called Quantum Dots Corp.
Manian, the serial entrepreneur-cum-scientist, holds 35 patents and has about 30 research papers to his credit. "Unlike most other entrepreneurs you have met, I don't go and start companies. I find a solution to a problem then I use a company as a way to implement the idea. Even though I am the chairman of the company, I can go and sit with somebody in the lab and go to the component level in hardware or check the software code. I en joy all that. In a lot of ways my approach to entrepreneurship is different from most others," he says.
All his companies are a driving distance from his home. His main preoccupation now is how to apply the information that science has, to biological discovery. He says science is generating islands of information and likens the situation to a Tamil proverb that says five blind men in a room with an elephant will each come up with differing pictures of the beast, depending on which part of it they touch. "People who work on SNI', proteomics and clinical informatics are looking at different parts," he explains. "I believe the next decade is going to be, not one of new discoveries, but of putting it all together and seeking connections. In order to make big strides we have to shed the Pavlov mentality. We have a tendency to do what is being done in University of Pennsylvania or some other place. Somebody has to break out of this and leap frog either from the clinical side or from the basic biology side. There is a great opportunity to recognise multi-dimensional data and begin to see patterns in it and there is no better machine than the human mind for that. That is how IT and biology have to converge."
His wife Tasneem has stopped practicing medicine and is very active in a support network for victims of domestic violence. Manian is on the board of trustees of the University of Rochester. "I want to figure out how to give back to India in education, instead of sitting here and pontificating," he says. We hope Indian universities, CSIR Labs and the Department of Biotechnology are listening.
The Raza of semiconductors
If one needs an example of enlightened India-Pakistan cooperation in the hi-tech Silicon Valley, then one need look no further than Atiq Raza of Raza Foundries. Unlike Kapany and Manian, Raza is not a pioneer in technology but one of the first to have ventured into the semi-conductor business, taken on giants such as Intel and given Indian and Pakistani engineers a break in his ventures.
"I have been playing a role in the hi-tech industry much before virtually any Indian arrived on the scene," says Raza. "During that time there was a tendency among some Indians who were beginning to move up, to distance themselves from other Indians. They probably thought that it would appear parochial. For me, exposure to Indian professionals had shown that they are very good. So when Nexgen happened, there were enough Indians coming out of IITS and other colleges and from the industry here and they appeared to be the cream of the crop. In Nexgen we made no differentiation between somebody who came from the Indian subcontinent or outside. One of the earliest cases of an immigrant-friendly environment was in Nexgen, Rajvir Singh and Vinod Dham were all part of it. Between 25 and 30 per cent of the engineers were Indian. Many of them have gone up and become extremely successful and have remained very close to me."
"We also created TiE (The IndUS Entrepreneurs) organisation with Kanwal Rekhi, Suhas Patil and Prabhu Goel taking an active role. I was not that active, but I emphasised that there should be no dividing line between Indians and Pakistanis. Whenever a Pakistani came to me, I told them also that we should remain completely united with Indian organisations and that is the way I have operated for the last 22 years in the United States. Most of the people who have known me have seen my consistent stand," he says. Recently, when Arjun Gupta, of Telesoft Partners, a venture capitalist firm, wanted a Pakistani expatriate to partner him to fund a project in Stanford University on how to reduce military tension and nuclear risk between India and Pakistan, he called Raza and got instant co-operation. "I did not fully understand the project until later, but I had enough faith in Arjun's values and judgement and so I signed up," says Raza.
His own value system has its roots back in the subcontinent. His family hails from Allahabad but his father, who was a brilliant radio engineer, though not formally trained as one, had settled in Lahore for health reasons. Raza was born in Lahore and when after Partition the family returned to Allahabad, they saw their home had been commandeered for refugee rehabilitation. Instead of entering into a dispute to get their home back, the family migrated to Lahore for good. Raza studied physics and philosophy simultaneously at two colleges of Punjab University. His interest in philosophy was kindled by his maths teacher in Aitchison College, a many-splendoured personality, who knew Sanskrit and Persian and had read the Upanishads and the Mahabharata and the Ramayana in the original. Raza then went to the Imperial College in London to study electrical engineering.
Unlike most of his peers, he felt obliged to give something back to the country he was born in, and went back to Pakistan in 1972 where he joined the Telephone Industries of Pakistan, Raza worked there for six years, but he saw the social fabric being increasingly taken over by extremists. "The liberal in Raza made him spend his spare time in the slums of Lahore after office hours, trying to help people out. He used to be called "masterji", since he was teaching them how to fill forms or fight for some basic services. But he started seeing Pakistan spin out of control into the hands of fundamentalists and armed groups of all sorts, and migrated to the US with his wife and child in 1978. He joined the University of Oregon and then later Stoanford University, for a masters in electrical engineering.
Soon after his graduation, he joined Synergetics and then Trilogy and later VLSI Technologies. When he was ready to take over as the chief executive officer of the US operations of a European semi-conductor company, Rajvir Singh came to him and asked him to join Nexgen as vice-president, engineering. Nexgen was a pioneering Indian start-up in 1987 in computer hardware, founded by Thampy Thomas. However, its business plan of making clones of Intel 386 processors and making pcs around it was not succeeding. Raza, who grew to be chairman and CEO of the company, changed the business plan. They started focusing on microprocessor design. Nexgen went public and its technology was coveted by another chipmaker AMD, which was struggling against Intel. AMD acquired Nexgen for $615 million in 1995. Raza became the president and coo of hamd and was the prime driver behind its new generation of chips: K6, K7 or Athlon. Their success made Intel see competition for the first time. “The foundation that has been built in AMD is quite solid and will bother Intel for a long time. Andy Grove used to call AMD the 'Milli-Vanelli of the chip industry who were lip-synchers and not singers, but today AMD is very strong,” says Raza.
However, in 1999 Raza had enough of AMD. His long-time friend Vinod Dham had left AMD in 1998 and joined a start-up, Silicon Spice, as CEO. Silicon Spice (it was acquired last year by Broadcom for a stock swap worth $1.2 billion) was trying to make broadband chips. At that point, another start-up was coming into being in the same space. This was called Vxtel, and was funded by Arjun Gupta's Telesoft Partners. Raza too had invested some money in Vxtel. Arjun Gupta asked Raza to run the company, and Raza accepted. "Vinod is a good friend and a highly competitive guy," says Raza. "But I saw that he was burdened with legacy issues at Silicon Spice, whereas we had a clean slate, so I had a better chance of succeeding" explains Raza. Consequently, when Vxtel produced its chips, Intel acquired it in February this year for $550 million in cash. The deal has shown that even in a downturn when many start-ups have shut down, there is demand for high technology. "I had seen what happened in the case of Silicon Spice-Broadcom deal (the stock of Broadcom has slid down so much that the acquisition is valued at less than $200 million today). So when Intel offered us stock and many of my board members were ready to accept it gladly, I put my foot down and insisted on cash," recalls Raza.
Raza has always encouraged other hi-tech entrepreneurs. When Rajvir Singh was trying to raise a million dollars for his Redwood Ventures fund, Raza was the first to write a cheque for $100,000 while being dropped to the airport.
Today Raza wants to set up more start-ups than just become a venture capitalist. So, he has started an incubator called Raza Foundries. “lt has a holding company structure where you not only invest, but support start-ups. We are concentrating on broadband networking communication products. If you ask people in the venture capitalist community, they speak reasonably well of us. We do not incubate companies, but we invest in strong start-ups and then grow them. Cisco has invested $60 million in us, Broadcom $10 million, AMCC $10 million, PMC sierra $10 million, Electralogic $10 million, Siemens and Infineon $12 million. They want an introduction to the companies we invest in and strategic partnership. They would like to have early access to products, and may be strategic acquisitions. We are now treated on par with large corporations in the chip industry," explains Raza.
Going back to his pet theme of subcontinental cooperation, Raza says, “Clearly, we need statesmen and not politicians. Today there may be more statesmen in India than Pakistan. If we build these bridges, and the statesmen establish their vision, most of the differences will disappear. It is the most natural alliance and I was telling Pakistan's ambassador to UN that these 22 years I have not understood the division and I did not understand it when I was in Pakistan too. Every time I run into Pakistanis, I tell them that it is an artificial boundary and it can be at least reduced in its sharpness," says Raza. We say, may his tribe increase.
When the history of high technology is written, the boom and bust of the past five years will appear as a blip. But the contribution made by Indian technologists and entrepreneurs in inventing new technology and successfully commercialising it, will have several luminaries listed. The three we have profiled here are definitely part of that select group.
Medicine-Rheumatoid Arthritis
Business India, October 15-28,2001
More than a cure
Rheumatoid arthritis is increasingly being recognised as a crippling disease which affects nearly one crore Indians
Shivanand Kanavi
Anthrax hogs the headlines and cardiovascular diseases and cancer hog the research dollars, but a crippling disease affecting 60 million people is blissfully neglected or assigned to cold bones and old age. That in short is the story of rheumatoid arthritis. That is why WHO has announced 12 October as World Arthritis Day and will further this decade as the Bone and Joint Decade.
In a series of conferences in Mumbai on 11 and 12 October organised by Aventis Pharma, several well-known clinical experts from the Indian League of Rheumatology Associations did their best to educate the public about this affliction. According to Prof. A.N. Malviya, former professor at AIIMS Delhi and a world-renowned rheumatologist, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a highly neglected disease. Even though in a survey done in Ballabgarh semi-urban area near Delhi with a sample set of 39, 000 people, his team found 0.75 per cent afflicted by RA, on a national scale that works out to a massive 75 lakh!
Symptoms:
Pain and aching in and around the joints, particularly hands, feet and knees
Morning stiffness
Swelling of joints
Persistent fatigue and run-down feeling
Muscle weakness and decreased physical activity
Inability to sleep due to painful joints
The disease affects women primarily (female-male ratio is 3: 1) and can occur at all ages, though it is more common post-menopause. Since the 1980s it has also been recognised that besides deforming her beyond repair, RA is serious enough to reduce the life of a patient by 5-8 years.
The cause of RA has not been understood, but it is recognised as one auto-immune diseases, In plain English it means the body's immune system, which is supposed to differentiate between "self" and "non-self' (harmful foreign bodies like bacteria and viruses) gets confused and starts attacking "self" (its own cells). In RA the T- and B-cells (part of body's defences) start attacking the synovium or joint lining (see figure). The synovium gets inflamed and thickened, producing large volumes of sinovial fluid. This causes pain, stiffness, and swelling. When this process is chronic, severe proteins are released, which damage the nearby cartilage and bone, causing erosion. This leads to joint damage, instability, and deformity.
Belatedly its seriousness has come to light. In fact there are just a handful of doctors in India who practice rheumatology exclusively. There are several physicians-cum-rheumatologists and fairly large number of orthopaedics treating the disease. Malviya stresses that educating doctors about the disease is almost as important as educating patients. The most common treatment for RA over the years has been to give the patient painkillers and non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs like paracetamol, ibuprofen, or the more modern Cox II types, which do not damage the intestines. Malviya prefers to call them "plain killers.” "The disease is surprisingly aggressive. It is not a protracted degenerative disease. If treated within six weeks it can almost surely be arrested. If treated within three months there are good chances, though some damage will have set in. But if delayed any further the damage becomes irreversible," he says. That is why painkillers which just reduce pain and give temporary relief give the patient the impression that everything is okay while irreversible damage is being done beneath the surface.
In the last few decades several drugs have been found to have a very good effect in arresting RA, though they were not initially discovered for that purpose, For example chloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, has been found to have very good effect on RA, in addition to being not expensive. Methotrexate, an anti-cancer drug, has been successfully used against RA and is the most popular treatment today. Malviya, who was one of the pioneers in developing methotrexate therapy, finds it the most effective in combination with other drugs. Sulfasalazine, a drug meant for a bowel disease, has also been found effective against RA.
What these drugs do is affect the rates at which cells divide by interfering in purine metabolism, a necessary step in DNA production - a much-needed raw material for cell division. Now when an autoimmune disease like RA has set in, the body produces too many warriors to fight itself. By reducing cell division, the growth of T- and B-cells is also arrested and hence the beneficiary effect for a RA patient. But the drugs have other side-effects and cannot differentiate between a T-cell and any other cell. Thus, all cell division gets arrested. In fact anti-cancer drugs act in this indiscriminate way and stop the growth of cancerous cells along with healthy cells, leading to severe side-effects in patients undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. One definite precaution to be taken in this therapy is that though the disease affects women more than men, they should not be pregnant since the growth of the foetus also involves intense cell division.
A drug targeted to arrest RA has recently been developed by Aventis Pharma. Leflunomide (trade name Arava) was launched in India on World Arthritis Day. This is a new-generation drug targeted at arresting lymphocyte division by largely interfering in pyrimidine metabolism. It has been found to have an excellent effect on patients in a very short time. However, the drug remains in the system for a long time and does not get expelled through excretion easily. Thus, women planning on conception should inform their doctor of the same so that he can give them additional drugs to flush leflunomide out from the system. which can take a few weeks. So far, leflunomide used to be smuggled into India from Thailand and costs about Rs150-200 per daily dose. However, Aventis is planning to introduce it at about Rs40.
There are also extremely effective biologicals (products of biotechnology) which cost from Rs60.000 a dose to Rs 4.5 lakh. A major concern in this segment is the 56 per cent customs duty that has to be paid and then all the local taxes. Since imports are in small quantities and the government does not really earn much money from this high duty. if these drugs are made duty-free then thousands of RA patients will get some relief from pain to their pockets as well!
Interestingly, as one of those wonders of nature, though RA patients cannot take any of the above-mentioned disease-modifying treatments during pregnancy, the body itself arrests RA and there is a temporary remission!
"The main problem today is educating the patients and the general population," says Dr K.M. Mahindranath, a renowned rheumatologist from Bangalore and president-elect of the Indian Rheumatology Association. "Since it mostly affects women, the initial symptoms of prolonged morning stiffness are taken as a sign of laziness by family members. Then, as the patient loses control over her fingers and starts dropping things she will be called clumsy and when she becomes sloppy and cannot even dress herself properly she stops going out and becomes a recluse. This in turn leads to depression, which worsens the problem. What is needed is proper counselling and encouragement to engage in appropriate physical therapy and other exercises. in addition to drugs." he adds. He welcomes Aventis's initiative In this regard through its newly launched "joint Effort" - where Aventis facilitates communication between the physician and patient using its own network of 200 medical representatives and 10 trained counsellors.
"We have exclusive marketing rights for Arava in Europe and North America, but owing to the IPR regime in India we do not enjoy any protection here. Therefore, it is to be expected that this drug, which in a short period of two years has reached sales of $250 million will be copied by some Indian companies and introduced in the Indian market. But there are two issues. Firstly, the drug has to be produced in extremely controlled conditions where there are no women workers and where no other drug is produced. If the authorities here insist on these manufacturing practices, I doubt anybody will qualify, considering that today only one factory in France supplies to the whole world and a new factory only to serve the small Indian market does not make economic sense. Secondly, RA therapy is more than just drugs. It means counseling, communication, and actually building a long-term relationship with the patient of which our Joint Effort will be a key component. I seriously doubt if any other company will invest in this." says Aventis CEO Ramesh Subramaniam.
But there are researchers who are trying to find out in detail how herbal drug therapies work using tools of modern medicine. C.N. Qazi, director of the Jammu Regional Research Laboratory of CSIR, and his predecessor S.S. Handa are two of this breed. Handa started work on boswellic acid extracted from the gum produced by the tree Boswellia sarata found in the forests of Madhya Pradesh. The beneficial effects of these guguls and gums for arthritis are cited in ayurveda. Handa studied the anti-inflammatory character of boswallic acids extensively over the last two decades. The standardised boswellian extract is being marketed by Gufic Laboratories under the brand name Salaki.
Qazi has picked up where Handa left off. He studied the other fractions in the extract and found those that are not just anti-inflammatory but actually immuno-modulatory in nature. The method of extraction, preparation, and use of these compounds have been patented by CSIR in Europe and the US, and animal trials too have been conducted with no toxic effect. Human trials are still to be done, but since herbal medicine does not require human trials, CSIR is negotiating with some companies to market these Immunomodulatory extracts, which have been effective in the arrest of arthritis. The research has generated a lot of interest internationally and this CSIR laboratory is getting a lot of snail mail and e-mail.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)