Is Fermentation the Future of India's Biotech and Pharmaceutical Sectors?

 What is fermentation technology?

By: Azim Shaikh
M.Sc Biotechnology 
B.Sc Biochemistry (Gold Medal)

Before the industrialization began, the term fermentation refers to any biological processes occurred due to the action of anaerobic microorganism. But in modern world, the fermentation encompasses all the process that are employed to obtain desired product.  Antibiotics, hormones, therapeutic proteins, nutritive supplements such as dried yeast etc. are prepared through fermentation production. 

The advantages of fermentation over normal chemical synthesis of drugs and cosmetics

Chemical synthesis also called as traditional way of drug manufacturing requires expensive raw materials such as irreplaceable precursors which usually increase the production cost of that drug. Some precursor chemicals are hard to obtained hence many manufacturer faces transportation issue. Fermentation employs cells (such as bacteria or fungi) or part of cells such as enzymes, specific proteins to biologically transform organic materials into the desired substance (or intended intermediate/KSM). Hence these cells usually require organic sources of energy which are often cheap and easy to obtain thus reducing the cost of raw materials (RMs). 

Often the products of these processes are environmental friendly as we are utilizing living machinery for the process. For example, Production of Polylactic Acid (PLA) using Lactobacillus mediated fermentation provides alternative source for non-degradable polythene. 

In India, fermentation industries are booming because of sudden emergence of biotechnology. A lot of new start-up focuses on fermentation technology as it is quite easy to establish one compare to expensive chemical reactors. R&D of fermentation is easy to set as new "microfermenters" are available by many international companies. A visit to biotechnology college will give you an idea about how many PG students are working on fermentation efficiency improvement as their dissertation problem. 

Present : Need for skilled workers

Indian pharma exports crore of rupees worth of drugs to the international markets from developing African countries to developed North American countries (i.e. USA, Canada). Any person capable of preparing media culture, handling aseptic operation or person with fermenter operation skill is very valuable asset to the company. You can work in seed laboratory or in Quality control department as a microbiologist. You can apply to be "biotechnologist" for the role of fermenter operation. The scope of these role will constantly increase in future and people with right skill-set will be able fetch handsome salary.

Lack of genuine R&D

R&D department in many companies only work on to improve the yield tweaking in late upstream process such as varying the raw material quantity or quality. But the core technology is imported from foreign country. They are R&D centers in name only. The main of these department to show on document that research and pilot studies were conducted so that they can grab financial aid from government as government is highly promoting bio-entrepreneurship because of the above said reasons. 

Future of fermentation industry

Future of this industry depends on India's international relation with other countries. but from this point, it is clear that this industry will constantly grow and provide ample opportunities to newly gradates from the fermentation and allied backgrounds (such as biotechnology, Industrial microbiology, life sciences, organic chemistry and mechanical engineering).

If you are wondering whether you should work in this sector then read this article should you work in pharmaceutical industry?