The Hindu Business Line : iGATE to expand footprint in India

He was "employee number 16" with multinational drug company Eli Lilly in its early days in India. From being part of Lilly's clinical research team to running his own ship, DiagnoSearch, which later got acquired by iGATE Corp, Dr Vasudeo Ginde has seen clinical research in India change.

Clinical research has evolved from "what is an ethics committee" about 10 years ago, to rejection of trial proposals these days by the ethics committees in hospitals, he says, recounting a gastro-enterology trial where ethics committees in several of the 31 hospital sites identified to do the trial actually rejected the proposal.

Clinical research has evolved to combine competence, infrastructure and skill, observes Dr Ginde, currently the President and Managing Director of iGATE Clinical Research International. Among the older runners in this race, iGATE Clinical Research is scaling up its clinical research footprint in India.

Increasing headcount

Over the next four months, iGATE's clinical research arm will increase the number of people working at its centre from 55 to 120, besides having a larger facility in Mumbai, he said.

And this doubling of capacities is not just for increased work coming its way, but also for better capacity utilisation, he said. Having done work for major drug firms such as Pfizer, Lilly, Bayer, Eisai and Roche, iGATE at present is undertaking nine clinical operations, six data management projects and 11 trials in its laboratory.

A lot of work is "repeat orders," he says, where initial work has been a "foot in the door" and helped drive more work to iGATE Clinical Research. Some of the work is in endocrinology and central nervous system segments, he says, keeping the details under wraps due to confidentiality agreements with the drug companies sponsoring the trials.

Minority stake

Dr Ginde continues to hold a minority stake in the company, he says, with iGATE Corp holding the majority. There has been "no pain in the organisation," he says, following the acquisition of his entrepreneurial venture by iGATE Corp in 2003. "We have lost only four people in nine years," he says, pointing out the non-interfering work environment at iGATE. And this, despite the shortage or personnel in clinical research and the poaching of human resources that takes place as a result.

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