Global economic slowdown will help India: Biocon Chairman

Bangalore, Apr 22 (UNI) India is well poised to take a large chunk of opportunities in pharmaceutical contract research in the wake of the global economic slowdown, Biocon Chairman and Managing Director Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said today.

Speaking to newspersons here, after announcing the company's annual results, she said expensing on research for discovering generic drugs by world majors had been on the rise and the economic slowdown in countries like the US would put a lot of pressure on these companies to bring down research and development expenditure.

''There will be increased outsourcing in both drug discovery and clinical research and India will be a very interesting destination for these activities due to the cost factor,'' Mazumdar-Shaw said.

There would be competition from China and some other Asian countries but India would be a favourite destination due to availability of large number of people with IT skills and language advantage.

''The Indian companies have built up a good record in pharma, engineering and service sector over the years. This will benefit the country to be a favourite destination for contract research,'' she added.

The company had posted a 29 per cent growth in its income from contract research to earn Rs 176 crore in the last fiscal, she said.

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