Dr. Ravi Kumar Meruva
Founder & CEO,
Sensa Core Medical Instrumentation (P) Limited

Dr. Ravi Kumar Maruva shared his decision for choosing the less travelled road of IVD industry, focussing on instrumentation rather than on reagents. In his opinion closed systems in biochemistry or haematology secure higher margins as compared to open systems in instrumentation. His company was into the manufacturing of variety of electrodes, functioning for a span of 8-10 years, this makes the heart of a technology so robust. Therefore, it was easier for the company to design a body around the heart designed earlier. Since most of the manufactures are moving towards closed systems, so it was a very judicial decision that has an exponential growth, ahead.

Dr. Rajesh Kumar Patel
Director,
Premier Medical Corporation (P) Limited

Dr. Rajesh Kumar addressed the challenges and strengths of being an export centric company in IVD. He opined that export to other countries opens up avenues in multiple markets, a larger scale production reduces the manufacturing costs, diversification & reduced risk; compensation of seasonal demands, improvement in the life cycle of the product, enhancement in knowledge due to more R & D to meet the international quality & standards are the other benefits of being in the export segment. He added that the challenges of being in this segment can also not be ignored as being in export, there is financial risk along with delay in payments, requirements for country specific product modifications, large product configurations and the inventory management. He also made the manufactures aware of the importance of WHO prequalification and its procedure.

Mr. Sanjaymon K R
General Manager, Business Development
Agappe Diagnostics Ltd.

Mr. Sanjaymon shared “Innovation, Quality & Affordability” have been the success mantra of Agappe. To answer the question on systematic steps taken towards indigenisation, he opined that the key step is the industry- industry partnership, Industry- academia partnership and more of localization for accessories and/or spare parts. That will involve more people, more jobs & thereby more employment. This will fulfil our true mission towards “Make in India” or made in India products. On sharing his experience on LAMP and its future in Indian diagnostics, he viewed that there has been innovation in LAMP in the last 5-6 years, this technology reduces the cost of hardware & is faster than RT PCR, nested PCR or CRISPR technology, possibly giving results with 10 min after doing the assay and also the results can be visualised as positive or negative. Further, transportation of reagents at -20oC in remote areas especially in India is a major challenge. LAMP based reagents could be transported at 2 to 8oC, even the cartridges of LAMP can be stored at RT. Covid-19 has changed the expectations of molecular based testing, with patients demanding results in an hour or even less, innovation in LAMP by the manufactures & researchers becomes all the more important.

Dr. Vishal Warke
Director R&D,
HiMedia Laboratories (P) Limited

Dr. Vishal Warke, from Hi -Media - a name synonymous with culture media globally, shared how indigenization of technology over more than four decades, has been the success mantra of his company in-spite of all odds, leading it to become one of the top three culture media companies in the world. He addressed the reason behind the presence of a very few players in the culture media industry. Firstly, the segment has a small ticket size as compared to pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Secondly, most of its resources come from nature e. g. ocean & seaweed because of which there is batch to batch variation and converting them into a standard product to get sustainable desired results that too in the absence of any defined technology, is the most challenging aspect of this segment. He also shared how the challenging situation faced by Dr. Warke, Founder & MD of Hi- Media while doing his doctorate due to scarcity of media became an impetus for the growth of Hi-Media company. Though the journey has been tough but the feeling of working for their nation and humanity gives tremendous satisfaction. Since most of the microbiology grade agar comes from cooler climate & oceans of certain type of nature, therefore, the observation of stripping off the natural resources, being one of the reasons for global warming has made company to lead to improvise, switch over to other substitutes and go “Animal Free”. Due to these major changes today Hi-Media is exporting its products to 150 countries across the globe diversifying from microbiology to stem cell, vaccine, therapeutics, plant tissue culture, hydroponics, fermentation media and most recently the rapid test medias, where different bacteria form different colour colonies etc.

Dr. Manoj Chugh
Associate Vice President
R&D, Transasia Bio-Medicals Limited

Dr. Manoj Chugh highlighted on how crucial is the role R & D in making Indian IVD companies successful. He opined that innovation was critical to the growth & progress of all industries across all sectors. Earning out in diagnostics is difficult as there are multiple stakeholders like lab personnel, hospital personnel and now a day’s patients too are well informed about the advancement. Pre- Covid times, Indian firms primarily imported low-cost tests developed elsewhere rather than developing entirely a new technology, competing against each other only. Now is the move from incremental innovation to radical innovation and that is the only mantra to compete with multinational companies which have the additional advantage of financial resources, powerful branding, high note management & marketing skills. Players in IVD industry focusing from volume to value will gain influence & have a competitive edge in the long run. It becomes important for all innovators to acquire significant share not only in the domestic but also in the international market. If we can supply diagnostic tests to International disease control initiative, we are winning. Thus, Dr. Chugh very well-articulated the importance of R & D and innovations that can never be under estimated in any industry including the IVD. He also explained that in recent times there has been a surge seen in industry academia collaboration that needs to be further sustained in future too. According to him, Innovation with indigenization demands multiple needs e. g. working outside main stream paradigm, large leaps of understanding, a new way of looking at the problem and considerable changes in higher technology are required. To win this, keeping in mind the mantra of “High risk & higher rewards” two systems seamlessly needs to collaborate i.e. generate knowledge through academia and to use or consume it through industry. So that even if there is a global arrest, we do not suffer to procure even the critical raw material. Recently, even the triple helix model where academia, industry & Govt. collaborated through Niti-Ayog has been fruitful.

Dr. D.K. Joshi
IPP, ADMI & Managing Director,
Beacon Diagnostics (P) Ltd.

Dr. Joshi threw light on the most awaited & concerned issue of IVD industry by all manufactures i.e. the support Indian IVD would require from the Govt. He stressed that the Indian IVD industry had been focusing mainly on reagents but during the last 3-4 years, device lock systems has restricted this. Every high-tech instrumentation company should tie up with local manufactures and this will boost up Atma-Nirbharta by initiating some provision of high duty by the Govt of India. He also highlighted that most of diagnostic industry in India is MSME, developing an infrastructure and spending huge money on R & D is quite challenging. Under these circumstances the Govt of India rather than providing any subsidy or production linked incentives, should cluster a group of selected companies which could bring technology to India, and Govt negotiates on behalf of those to divide the cost of technology transfer among the interested companies. The reduced in cost would give hope to the manufactures to keep momentum in Indian IVD industry. In-fact this very promising proposal was appreciated by Ms. Veena Kohli and would be discussed by ADMI for further perusal.

Conclusion and Vote of Thanks
Mr. Abhinav Thakur
Secretary, ADMI & Managing Director,
Accurex Biomedical (P) Limited

The panel discussion was concluded with summarising note of the speakers and a vote of Thanks by Mr. Abhinav Thakur, Secretary, ADMI & managing director, Accurex Biomedical (P) Ltd.