Ocimum looks at the global market with biotech software

In order to take advantage of the growing interest in bioinformatics worldwide, the Indian subsidiary of Ocimum Biosolutions, a software solutions provider for the biotechnology industry, is eyeing the global market to sell its biotech software. Venkat Pulapaka reports

Ocimum’s long-term goal is to enter drug target discovery tools and validation markets, says Anuradha Acharya

Industry pundits estimate the global bioinformatics market to be $1.82 billion by 2007. The growth rate is expected to stabilise at 17 percent per annum until 2007.

In this emerging market segment is Ocimum Biosolutions India, a life sciences contract research and development company with competencies in bioinformatics, genomics, proteomics and custom contract research services, with operations in USA and Hyderabad, India. The Hyderabad centre is part of the $70 million (sales for fiscal year 2002-2003) Ficus Enterprises (formerly Saraca Group), the world’s largest producer of Sulpha-Methaoxazole, and one of the top three producers of Ranitidine in India. Ficus’ clientele includes global majors such as Glaxo Burroughs Wellcome, Apotex, Roche, Teva Pharma, Sanofi Winthrop, Shionogi & Co and Smithkline Beecham among others.

Ocimum provides cost-effective software solutions for the biotechnology industry—with a suite of products such as Genchek, Biotracker, Optgene, Nutrabase, Proteowiz and Genowiz, and an array of custom services, including data mining, algorithm development, gene identification, multiple platform software development, database creation and manipulation, and tools for image analysis.

Ocimum’s client base is spread across both academia and industry and spanning small biotech firms, bioinformatics companies, university labs, agri-biotech, pharma companies like Dow AgroSciences; JK Agri Genetics; Hospital for Joint Diseases; New York, KooPrime Singapore; and, IIT Kharagpur.

Objective and goals

Ocimum Biosolutions started as a limited liability company (LLC) based in the US in August 2000. The Indian operation was formally launched in Hyderabad in March 2001 as an informatics support centre to provide all the software solutions the US lab required. Today, the Indian centre has become a full-fledged bioinformatics and LIMS software vendor with six product offerings.

"The main objective of the Indian arm is to become a drug discovery company using informatics tools. The initiative was to provide off-the-shelf tools like Genchek, which is a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS)-based multi-platform nucleotide and amino acid sequence analysis tool. We also wanted to provide good infrastructure for managing data in the lab and so we started a LIMS division. We have now moved up the value chain and have come up with niche products like OptGene, which is a multi-platform compatible bioinformatics software that enables design of genes with optimised features for expression in an organism of choice," says Anuradha Acharya, Ocimum’s chief executive officer, who heads the development team at Hyderabad and is also the company’s chief software architect.

Verticals

The Hyderabad development centre focuses on providing bioinformatics software solutions. It has three types of products and provides informatics services. Some of the verticals Ocimum caters to include biotechnology companies, agricultural companies, pharmaceutical companies and research labs and universities. Being a products company, the first and most important thing for Ocimum is to build world-class products for the biotech and pharma industry.

It plans to achieve this by penetrating the market using its off-the-shelf tools and then moving into the niche areas. Further, it plans to build a strong network around the world to market its products.

Challenges

In the process, the company may face challenges like long sales cycles, small market segment and quick research advances. Therefore software companies like Ocimum have to keep up with these advances.

The company is also looking at targeting new markets. "We have marketing offices/distributors in Canada, Germany, Singapore, UK and Denmark. And soon we hope to tap new markets like Australia and Japan," says Acharya.

Opportunities

Says Acharya, "Since we have good products and a good team we can face such challenges head on. Since biotechnology is still a new market, we have a first-to-market product in certain cases. And more opportunities would be coming our way with regulatory bodies imposing use of electronic means, resulting in a larger number of companies investing in software."

Ocimum’s contract research services include analytical diagnostic services to pharma and agricultural organisations, and CGMP contract manufacturing for biologicals and non-biologicals. "Our labs utilise state-of-the-art systems for sample tracking, nucleic acid and protein analysis, and provide the highest standards of custom services," says Acharya.

Strict adherence to quality practices and prompt delivery times, and respect for clients’ proprietary and confidential information, have further reinforced Ocimum’s position as one of the fastest growing and most dependable companies in the biotechnology industry.

"We realise the problems faced by a typical research lab in combining different software tools and also different data types. We have strived to make the most integrated software possible, using cutting-edge Java and other Web technologies. This will speed up our client’s discovery process and prevent IT problems that come up with non-compatibility between software platforms and data formats," says Acharya.

According to her, in the short term, Ocimum is concentrating on product sales and customisation and development of niche products in the medium term. Ocimum’s long-term goal is to enter drug target discovery tools and validation markets. "We plan to build a lot of intellectual property rights in our area of expertise," she adds.

Achievements

The Hyderabad centre recently received an ISO 9001:2000 certificate for its quality management system (QMS) from Det Norske Veritas. To be certified to this standard, Ocimum implemented a QMS covering the analysis, design, coding, testing, installation and after-sales support of software related to laboratory information management system (LIMS) and bioinformatics.

Says Acharya, "The ISO certification serves as an impartial and public appraisal of Ocimum’s software procedures and products, and provides us with guidelines to continue producing the highest-quality bioinformatics and LIMS software."

Competition

"In India, we don’t have anybody directly competing with us in the same product space. For Genchek our biggest competition is from Informax, which is now part of Invitrogen. For Biotracker, there are several vendors but none can compare with us in terms of features and prose combination. Genowiz and Proteowiz have few competitors. Nutrabase and Optgene have no competitors worldwide," says Acharya.

Ocimum products are LIMS-based, user configurable and coding using Java. This makes it platform-independent and Ocimum also writes programs to be database-independent to give the client maximum flexibility.

Ocimum’s Hyderabad centre is a lean, flat and transparent organisation with 45 employees divided into teams, each of which has a leader, a quality assurance expert, developers and domain experts. Each employee is allowed direct access to management at any time.

Future focus

Ocimum aims to generate revenues above $5 million in the next two years and plans to be amongst the three top bioinformatics software vendors in the world in the next five years.