Return of the natives a tonic for pharma cos

Pradeep Bhatnagar's life had all the ingredients of the professional Indian dream: a plum job in the US (director -- alliance management with GlaxoSmithKline), wife, two kids, two cars and a house with a one-acre backyard in Upper Marion, Philadelphia.

A year and a half ago, he left it all behind to join as head of Ranbaxy Laboratories' new chemical entity research team at Gurgaon, where the 4-km journey from his house to office often takes 90 minutes.

"I miss my backyard, but I wanted to be a part of the excitement in India,"" says Bhatnagar.

The American accent he retains wouldn't stand out in the R&D wings of frontline Indian pharmaceutical companies.

Having moved into original research, they have attracted overseas professionals looking to come back, some nudged by MNCs' narrowing research.

It has helped that the salaries have doubled in the last two-three years. "Senior scientists earn close to the US levels now,"" says Glenn Saldanha, Glenmark Pharma's chief executive.

Eli Lilly, Wyeth and GlaxoSmithKline have all outsourced chemistry work to Indian companies. Bayer is among those that closed down major research facilities in the US last year.

Merck & Co shut down research labs in England and Japan in late 2005 and found an outsourcing partner in Advinus Therapeutics, set up by Rashmi Bharbhaiya, who quit as a researcher for Bristol-Myers Squibb in New Jersey to head Ranbaxy's research in 2001.

Kasim Mookhtiar, Bharbhaiya's former colleague at Bristol-Myers, followed him to Ranbaxy and Advinus.

Ranbaxy hires 35-40 returnees every year. "All these degrees (of the R&D people) give me a complex," says a laughing Malvinder Mohan Singh, Ranbaxy's chief executive.

Saldanha was working with PricewaterhouseCoopers when, in 1998, he decided to come back. Two years later, he took charge of Glenmark -- set by up father Gracias and named after sons Glenn and Mark -- and built a new drug research laboratory. His top team has several people who have studied or worked abroad.

In 1994, Dr Reddy's became the first Indian company to set up a new drug development lab. At that time, multinational Hoechst was closing down its Indian drug discovery lab and its scientists gravitated to Reddy's.

Its R&D has 60-70 people with exposure in the West and its president, discovery research, R Rajagopalan, had joined it after 22 years with Hoechst.