Opinion

Chasing an elusive pot of gold

Culling feedback to our first issue, this time's Express Biotech looks at both the global scenario as well as domestic growth strategies of Indian biotech players. Therefore the Market section has a detailed study of the different models of global growth adopted by Indian biotech companies, vis a vis the pharma industry. In our lead story in the Management section, we analyse the plans of the Government of Gujarat to emerge as a sizable biotech player in the near future.

As healthcare spending rises, patients and their doctors are also expecting more out of diagnostics services. Today, the emphasis is on speedy diagnosis, which leads to early detection and treatment. We've therefore devoted this time's Technology section to this evolving segment. The Diagnostics Special begins with a spotlight on the plans of two companies who chose to do things a little differently from the others. The founder of one of them, in fact, has tried his hand at a couple of other lifesciences- related enterprises in the past, which were not successful. But fortunately, failure has not killed the entrepreneur in him and today his diagnostics solutions offer a value proposition for both doctor and patient and he is closer to his 'pot of gold' than ever before. We are sure there are many more players like these two and hope to cover them in future issues.

It is one thing to be cautious but quite another to ignore opportunity, all because we have a natural tendency to shun risk of all kind. As Big Brother pharma faces an innovation crunch today, we fervently hope that the biotech industry nurtures more such examples of technopreneurs who are not afraid to choose a road less traveled and take their idea to its conclusion. After all, the badge of failure means that at least we tried.

Viveka Roychowdhury
viveka.r@expressindia.com