How does this facility differ from your earlier collaborations, such as the one with the Bangalore Bioinnovation Centre (BBC)?
Our earlier collaboration with BBC was strongly focused on skill development. While skilling remains central to our mission, this new facility significantly expands technical capability and scale. We now operate bioreactors up to 200 litres and offer integrated end-to-end upstream and downstream process development. The facility fills certain technological gaps and allows more advanced process optimisation and scale-up simulations. Rather than competing with existing centres, it complements them, enabling broader ecosystem collaboration.
Skill development is often cited as a bottleneck in India’s biopharma growth. How are you addressing this challenge?
Biopharma training requires hands-on exposure to expensive instruments and consumables, making it far more resource-intensive than sectors like IT. We offer three- to five-day modular programmes tailored to industry professionals, covering both basic and advanced upstream and downstream process development. These are practical, simulation-based programmes designed to reflect real manufacturing conditions. For universities, we are collaborating with the Life Sciences Sector Skill Development Council (LSSSDC) to build credit-based and finishing school models that combine online learning with hands-on laboratory training. We envision structured three- to six-month blended programmes that ensure both scale through digital modules and depth through immersive lab experience, thereby producing industry-ready talent.
If companies use different equipment platforms, how transferable is the training provided at your facility?
Our approach is process-centric rather than equipment-centric. When we train professionals on topics such as column packing, yield optimisation, or process robustness, we focus on scientific principles and best practices that apply across platforms. While advanced modules may introduce proprietary features of our systems, the foundational knowledge is universal and transferable. This ensures that participants can adapt their learning to different technologies with minimal adjustment.
The term “Fast Track” suggests speed. What exactly does that mean in the context of biologics, where processes have fixed biological timelines?
We cannot accelerate biological phenomena like cell division. What we can accelerate is process efficiency. Many companies lose valuable time in repeated iterations due to limited experience or infrastructure constraints. By leveraging decades of expertise and established technologies, we help customers avoid unnecessary trial-and-error cycles and move toward optimised, regulatory-ready processes more efficiently.
Narayan Kulkarni
