‘ Our products are used in various labs ’
TACO is the leading clean room services and consumable provider to the pharmaceutical industry in India. Selvaraju, Head, TACO, reveals more to Sachin Jagdale

What are your products?
Our products are antistatic garments, lint free wipes, static dissipative PU shoes, absorbent wiping cloth, disposable sticky mats, consumables - disposable non-woven and plastic, lint free clean room hand mop, nit rile and vinyl gloves, acid resistant gloves, special finish grip gloves etc. Our bench top instruments include liquid handling products, weighing scales, gel documentation and analysis system etc.

Which are the industry segments you cater to?
Our products are used in various labs like pharma, biotech, drug discovery, scientific research, electronic, food, cosmetics, chemical, textile, hospital, automobile manufacturing etc.

What are the challenges in pharma industry you see?
From 1930, when the first pharma company Bengal Chemicals and pharma works were started we have come a long way to being the second largest in the world by volume. India's greatest strength is its people and we can boast of well educated English speaking work force. Though we have market leaders like Ranbaxy, Dr Reddy's, Cipla, our investment into R&D is only five to ten per cent of the revenue, which is very less compared to multinationals like Pfizer. The drug discovery process is hindered by lack of qualified molecular biologist, now after the recession we have seen reverse brain drain effect like scientists returning from abroad, to accept positions at lower salaries. In the recent years we have also seen lot of clinical research companies coming into India because of our huge population and lower trial costs and one major disadvantage is competing with Information Technology (IT), compensation and above all if one decides to get in to research in India he needs seven to ten years of education to specialise in order to work in biotech again, after all this will he be competitive to work in the industry remains a doubt, the reason being the ineffectual out dated curriculum in many universities.

Who are your pharma clients?
Our pharma clients are Cipla, Biocon, Apotex Pharma, Natural Remedies, Jubilant Life Science amongst many others like Sartorius, Karuturi Foods, Cryo-Save, Stempeutics research, Semler Research Centre, Bharat Electronics, TVS motor company, Universal Cable, Christian Medical College, etc.

Tell us your market share in India
Since, we are just three years old our market share is comparatively low, we will for sure have a major share in the years to come.

Do you export your products?
We are doing the ground work for the same and if everything falls in place, we will start exporting our products in the next financial year.

Any new products in the pipeline?
We are also planning for chemical resistant wares and industrial safety products.

What are your future plans?
As I have already mentioned India's main strength is well educated, english speaking quality work force we are planning to enter the manufacturing sector, so our dependency on import from other countries lessens and we will be able to deliver quality product at competitive rates.