The Hindu Business Line : The growing bio marketspace

IT was at Bio 2004, held recently in Bangalore, that Kiran Mazumdar Shaw spoke of one million jobs by the end of the decade and around Rs 1,000 crore of investments in the biotechnology sector. The Centre too is expected to frame a new biotech policy within six months and put in place a regulator. Export revenues rose to Rs 750 crore last year, from about Rs 500 crore the previous year. Bio is getting bigger.

To help take biotech to the market, Françoise Simon and Philip Kotler present Building Global Biobrands, a book from Free Press (www.simonsays.com) . The authors, one from biotechnology and the other from marketing, "show managers how to innovate with bionetworks and create sustainable advantage ... driven by a web of cross-industry collaboration."

The transforming forces will be three, they aver: IT, consumerism and systems biology. Chapter 1, titled `the new bio marketspace,' introduces you to another trio: the `three bases of competition' for biotechnology to fulfil its potential — "innovation, branding and global reach." Innovation is defined as "shifting from pharmacos to biotechs."

Ever heard of `carbohydrate economy'? But that's what is emerging, the book notes, "with bio-fuels, plant-based polymers, and high-efficiency enzymes." Also, "Distinction between food, cosmetics, and medicine is fading." An example is "a strain of golden rice yielding provitamin A" that has been engineered. "Unilever is marketing medical foods such as a cholesterol-reducing margarine."

Bio is getting into almost everything. Thus biotech plus pharma is biopharma, sales of which dwarf biotech sales. "Pharma needs biotech's innovation; and biotech needs pharma's scale." Capacity has become a crunch; so the focus is on biomanufacturing. Asia-Pacific is but left with less than 3 per cent share in the global biotech revenue pie; the US has a whopping 72 per cent and Europe 22 per cent. "China's biosector is embryonic but high-potential, whereas India has major pharmacos — but these are facing a sharp transition from generic manufacturing to drug discovery."

While advising on formulating biomarketing, the authors talk of creating new market space: "Expand into the `white spaces' of the competitive map rather than fight for share in a crowded category." An example is the menopause market where the book presents a map with products such as diet, soy supplements, calcitonin, phytoestrogens and so on.

A McKinsey survey, conducted a few years ago, found that 83 per cent of consumers were confident in their ability to self-medicate; 67 per cent made health-driven lifestyle choices. There is scope, therefore, for biopharma companies to engage with consumers directly. "Post-genomic medicine is expected to evolve in two different ways: First it will move from detection and treatment to prediction and prevention; second, its focus will shift from populations to individuals."

A word that marketers never like to hear is `generics.' Biotechs can learn from the experience of pharma in this area, says the book. Apparent rivals tie hands in alliances: As industry spanners (newest entrants shaping the bioinformatics field); network orchestrators (managing a diversified portfolio); aggregators (with linkages ranging from in-licensing to acquisitions); and forward integrators (developing drug-making skills).

If you are in the bio-race, catch up with Simon and Kotler.

BookMark@thehindu.co.in

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
For home and heart

Testing the waters

Romancing the skies

Quo vadis, consumerism?

Writing right

New face at AAAI

To school, they go

The year of Dawn, Splendor and Passion

The growing bio marketspace