Concerned over the lack of industry-ready graduates in the biotech sector, Biocon has launched its own academy.
The Bangalore-based biotechnology company has launched a 4-month full-time certificate programme in Biosciences in collaboration with California-based Keck Graduate Institute (KGI), which will be a combination of theory and hands-on project training, according to company officials.
Enrolments have started for the January 2014 batch and deadline for online application is December 6, the company said.
This announcement comes at a time when the biotech sector, which churns out 40,000 graduates annually, finds that only 2,000 are employable graduates.
To address this, Biocon’s academy will offer modules on introduction to US FDA and European laws, molecular biotechnology, pharmaceutical development, biopharmaceutical quality assurance and control, CMC regulations of pharmaceuticals, mammalian cell biotechnology, fermentation principles, bioseparation engineering & science and professional skills development.
Faculty mix
The faculty will be a mix of Biocon executives and professors from KGI.
Further, a student enrolling in the course will have to fork out around Rs 1.5 lakh.
“About 80 per cent of the 1,000 graduates we hire are not industry-ready and we spend a year to get them into the job,” said Kiran Mazumdar- Shaw, Chairperson and Managing Director, Biocon.
The first batch will start off with 25 students and Biocon has plans to train 100 students in the first year.
Further, Biocon has invested Rs 10 crore in technology, courseware and other things and Shaw said that an addition of Rs. 5 crore will be spent every year on the academy. With this partnership, Biocon is hoping that KGI would replicate its US life-sciences success in India.
“India needs to create a talent pool of at least 10,000 professionals,” added Shaw.
Not a first
This is not the first time that Biocon has ventured into training.
In 2007, it entered into a Memorandum of Understanding and established Deakin Research Institute in Bangalore and a joint initiative to develop a mammalian cell bio-processing facility at Victoria, Australia.
India’s biotech industry is estimated at about $11 billion having grown at 20 per cent CAGR in the last 10 years.