Bioinfo sector poised for boom

BV Mahalakshmi in Hyderabad

Till recently considered to be at the nascent stage, the budding Indian bioinformatic industry is estimated to have reached a size between $200 million and $500 million, according to a research outfit surveyed on behalf of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

Without divulging the name of the consultants who estimated the market size, Dr M Vidyasagar executive vice-president of TCS said, “The hype about the growth of this sector has already been initiated and it is supposed to grow into a $3 billion industry by 2004”.

The convergence of biotechnology (BT) and IT-led to a new area of development termed as bioinformatics which is expected to catalyse the growth of the biotech and pharma sectors besides providing a boost to IT services companies.

The areas of interest in BT include, gene mapping, proteomics, DNA micro array, genome sequence analyses, comparative genomics, molecular modelling and simulation, protein functions, etc, which require computing tools.

According to Dr Vidyasagar, many venture capitalists are showing interest in funding the bioinfo start-ups, similar to those web-based and dotcom companies.