NEW YORK, April 21 (GenomeWeb News) - Agilent Technologies will begin distributing its microarray products to India, expanding its life-sciences business efforts there from its sales base of chemical and pharmaceutical QA/QC equipment, the company said today.
The announcement follows the release for comment of India's draft biotechnology strategy earlier this month. In that strategy, India's government proposed establishing a National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority to oversee market clearance for all biotechnology products, and suggests that priority be given to research in molecular and cellular biology, neuroscience, molecular genetics, transplantation biology, genomics, proteomics, systems biology, RNA interference, and stem-cell research.
Agilent, which is considered by some observers to be the largest biotechnology equipment supplier in India, said the country's recent biotech positioning can fuel demand for molecular biology tools, including its microarrays.
"Growth in sectors like biopharmaceuticals, contract research bioservices, agriculture, genetic engineering, and molecular medicine will drive growth for analytical instrumentation," Sanjeev Dhar, who was named Agilent's India manager in January, said in a statement.
See BioCommerce Week, a GenomeWeb News publication, for an interview with Dhar and an article on India's molecular-biology tools market.