Biocon toasts devices facility launch with unique product

Biocon on Tuesday inaugurated what Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairperson and MD, Biocon, calls “a tribute to the Make in India initiative”.

The company’s 100,000-square feet, state-of-the-art new devices facility in Bengaluru was inaugurated by Amitabh Kant, Secretary, Department of Industrial Promotion and Policy (DIPP), in the presence of Kaushik Mukherjee, Chief Secretary, Government of Karnataka, and V Manjula, Secretary, IT, BT, and S&T, Government of Karnataka. The company also launched its ready-to-use long-acting basal insulin glargine disposable pen, ‘Basalog One’.

The first-of-its-kind product has been designed by US-based Becton Dickinson, and built at Biocon’s new devices facility. The new facility will be home to manufacturing Biocon’s new-generation devices for its insulin portfolio.

Basalog One will be launched at the price of Rs 749 in the Indian market. “Basalog One will be out in the market by next week, in India,” said Shaw. She added that in the next few months the focus will be on launching the product in the emerging markets.
  
The company plans to enter the US and European markets by 2018. “Once we clear the regulatory gateways, we will introduce Basalog One in the US and European markets which should be around 2018,” said Shaw.

Estimated $9.4-bn market
The global market for insulin delivery products is estimated to be about $9.4 billion. With Basalog One added to its portfolio, Biocon aims to provide insulin products to at least one in five diabetics across the globe. 

The new devices facility, which was built at an investment of Rs 100 crore, holds capacity to manufacture ten million pens a year, and this can be quadrupled.  The company is also working on developing ‘insulin in a tablet form’. “The aim is to improve accessibility and affordability wherein our products offer high-quality, yet are affordable,” said Shaw. “A blockbuster drug must be about treating a billion patients,” she said.

“Medical devices should be manufactured in India. This is a very big opportunity we have in the pharma space and it is what will pave the way to expand India's biotechnology market, being led by biopharma,” Kant said at the launch. Bio-pharma currently takes up 60 per cent of the biotechnology space in India.