Hyderabad-based Mahindra University is working on creating a talent pool for the biotechnology and pharma industry, which is expanding in a big way but lacks trained professionals.
Rajendra Singh Chauhan, dean, School of Life Sciences, at Mahindra University, said the varsity is offering B Tech courses in biotechnology and computational biology to create an effective academic ecosystem that supports the concerns of the industry.
Being in Hyderabad, there are certain advantages, he added. The city has a genome valley which houses several life sciences and biotech companies. There are several multinational pharma companies based in the city and also a medical devices park. The advantage of having these bio clusters would definitely enrich the overall training and teaching of the students, Chauhan said. “The students can be readily exposed to the industry, where they can do internships. We can bring in industry professionals who could guide the students, and set up research programs, especially when it comes to computational biotechnology, it has to be done with a very strong research culture,” he added.
While the biotech industry has been pegged at over $80 billion in FY22, growing at 14% over FY21, the pharma industry is growing at a CAGR of over 9% in the last nine years.
The government of India’s Department of Biotech has launched the Bio Entrepreneurship Competition at the national level in which Mahindra University is providing mentorship. Students, only for a month with the university, have already started exhibiting solutions in this pan-India event. “We have a faculty that is comparable to any institute, whether it is IITs or IISCs. And of course, the infrastructure. All these help us to prepare the students in a better way,” Chauhan said.
Yajulu Medury, the university’s vice-chancellor, said in February 2020, the university had two students from France and the UK doing a six-month internship at the institute, but Covid-19 halted the foreign students’ flow. “But we see the trend kicking off again post pandemic. We do have a large number of foreign students coming to India, mainly from the African and Southeast Asian countries. But students from the US, that’s still small in numbers. Things are changing as far as research is concerned and the university has seen a gradual increase in students inflow from other countries across the globe as well,” Medury said, adding: “Over the next few years, we might observe an increased intake of foreign students especially from the US and European regions.”
Some of the key factors behind this growth could be the government’s proactive measures such as Study in India and the growth in demand for internship-based educational courses. These internship-based programmes, curated in collaboration with leading players from the engineering and technology space, could enable Mahindra University to attract foreign students and pursue them to come do a course or more. A student who comes in may get an offer of internship at Tech Mahindra or Mahindra & Mahindra. This would provide them with the requisite industrial experience that they are looking for before they return to their homeland, Medury added.
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