“Biosuppliers must invest not only in scientific capability but also in green infrastructure and transparent reporting”

How has Tecan’s business grown in India (in the life sciences sector) over the years? How much revenue was generated during FY25-26? How much growth is expected this year?

Tecan has supported India’s life sciences community for more than a decade through distribution partnerships and the market has become increasingly important as investment grows across pharma, biotech, CROs, academia and diagnostics. With our new direct presence, we are strengthening local sales, service and specialist application support to build on this foundation.

Publicly, Tecan reported global 2025 sales of CHF 883 million. The company does not report revenue or growth figures at the country level.

Which products/ services in India have generated maximum business for Tecan in the last few years? Are you planning to launch new products in India this year or later?

Tecan's flagship Fluent Liquid Handler and its leading Multimode Reader and Washer portfolio have been key enablers for India's laboratory ecosystem, helping customers scale and automate their workflows across pharma, biotech, and research settings. These platforms remain central to our offering. On the new product front, in 2025, we have launched the Duo Digital Dispenser, an exciting innovation that we are bringing to the Indian market to support compound screening and single-cell workflows. Looking ahead, we are continuously expanding our portfolio and will be introducing solutions tailored to the evolving needs of our customers globally. 

Are you planning new hires in India with your direct presence? Please elaborate.

Our new direct presence includes a dedicated local sales and specialist service team based in Gurugram, near New Delhi. As customer engagement grows, we expect to continue building local capabilities in a focused way, particularly in customer-facing sales, service, technical and application support roles.

Tecan has supported customers in India for more than a decade through distribution partnerships. Why was now the right time to establish a direct presence in the market?

India is one of the fastest-growing life sciences markets globally. Its ecosystem of CRDMOs, pharma companies, and biotechs is increasingly competing on the world stage, demonstrated by India's CRDMO sector growing at 15 per cent CAGR, double the global rate. We want to be directly present to best deliver innovation, strengthen technical support, improve responsiveness and build strategic collaborations. The moment to deepen that partnership is now.

Beyond sales and service operations, are there plans to establish application labs, training centres, GCCs, or innovation collaborations in India in the future?

Yes, and we have already taken a concrete first step. We have signed an MoU with C-CAMP in Bangalore to establish a Centre of Excellence focused on multiomics and DMPK workflows. Built around a Fluent automation workstation and a Spark Multimode Reader, this centre will benefit C-CAMP's incubator and research community while also serving as a hub for training, demonstrations, and application development. It is a strong signal of our long-term commitment to co-innovating with the Indian scientific community.

India’s life sciences sector is evolving rapidly, particularly across biopharma, CROs and diagnostics. How do you see the country’s laboratory automation landscape changing over the next few years?

India's life sciences sector is at a genuine inflection point. The CRDMO industry alone is on the verge of a transformative shift, driven by rising demand for innovative pharmaceutical outsourcing and a major realignment of global supply chains away from single-source dependencies. Indian organisations are building unique capabilities and positioning themselves as preferred innovation partners worldwide. Laboratory automation will be central to enabling that ambition, scaling throughput, ensuring reproducibility, and freeing scientists to focus on higher-value discovery work. We see the automation landscape accelerating significantly across biopharma, CRDMOs, and diagnostics over the next three to five years.

With Tecan now operating directly in India, what differences can customers expect in terms of technical support, service responsiveness, and local collaboration?

Customers can expect closer access to Tecan global expertise, more direct technical engagement, improved service responsiveness and stronger local collaboration. The goal is to support customers not only at the point of purchase, but throughout the lifecycle of their workflows,  from consultation and implementation to service, optimisation and future expansion.

Adoption of advanced lab automation technologies can sometimes be slower in emerging markets due to infrastructure, investment, or skills challenges. What barriers do you see in India?

Key barriers include capital investment constraints, infrastructure readiness, availability of trained automation specialists, integration with existing workflows and the need to demonstrate clear return on investment. Tecan’s role is to help customers adopt automation in a practical, scalable way that fits their scientific needs and their operational and budget realities.

Looking ahead, which areas of growth or innovation in India’s life sciences ecosystem are you most excited about, and where do you see the greatest opportunities for Tecan to contribute?

The momentum is visible across the entire ecosystem. We are excited by India’s growth in biopharma, the CRDMO industry, translational research, diagnostics and advanced clinical workflows. These are areas where automation can help improve throughput, reproducibility and confidence in results. Tecan can contribute by combining global automation expertise with stronger local support and collaboration.

Tecan is a key player of the biosupplier market in India, and across the globe? According to you, what opportunities, trends and challenges are facing the biosupplier market?

At a global level, a realignment of pharmaceutical supply chains can be observed, creating demand for diversified, high-quality suppliers outside of traditional geographies. The rise of new modalities, such as cell and gene therapies, ADCs, and RNA therapeutics, is also opening new avenues that suppliers with advanced capabilities are well positioned to serve. Sustainability and ESG compliance are becoming genuine criteria for supplier selection among large pharma customers, meaning biosuppliers must invest not only in scientific capability but also in green infrastructure and transparent reporting. On the challenge side, skill availability and global trade barriers for raw materials remain the key hurdles to navigate. At Tecan, we try to navigate this together with our customers by providing automation solutions that support a wide range of applications, improve quality and scalability, and deliver a clear return on investment.

Mansi Jamsudkar Padvekar 

mansi.jamsudkar@mmactiv.com