Waters India recently completed 25 years of service in India. The company has been investing in the country towards creating world class infrastructure and manpower to address industry requirements. In 2011, 17 per cent of Waters’ revenue was from academic and government institutions. Pharmaceutical organisations, including biotech companies, contributed 59 per cent while industrial, food and environmental organisations comprised 24 per cent of Waters’ revenue.
In order to meet the ever increasing requirement of the local market, waters India is coming up with an additional office space of more than 16,000 square feet in Bangalore, which will house its India technology centre. The centre will have all modern equipment to train and educate the customers and assist in their research activities.
| Art Caputo |
Waters has also built a support and application development infrastructure in Singapore. Arthur ‘Art’ Caputo, President, Waters Corporation said, “The Singapore market has been designed to service the entire market in South East Asia. We do see South East Asia as a potential growth area and will continue to invest as the markets there develop.”
Over the past several years, Waters has expanded the Centers of Innovation (COI) Programme around the globe and across industries. This unique programme recognises and supports analytical scientists who facilitate breakthroughs in health and life science research, food safety, environmental protection, and sports medicine, amongst others. Scientists from the near by 20 COIs, in partnership with Waters, are using liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry to unlock the mysteries of science and take research down new and exciting paths.
Caputo revealed that the company would soon be announcing the establishment of their first Indian COI, which is in the final stages of discussion, marking the participation by Indian scientists in the COI programme.
Talking about the impact of the global economic downturn on the lab analytical business, Caputo made a strong case for the sector’s resilience, saying, “In a year that saw the world’s population top seven billion people, societies across the world are ever more dependent upon laboratory science to improve our health, our food, and our environment. This is not to suggest that challenging economic conditions do not affect our business, because they do. However, laboratory science is more important and more dependent upon than any time in human history.”
Elaborating on the challenges of sustaining growth in such depressed conditions, Caputo said, “Innovation is key to our customers’ success. Innovation spans a wide definition from the novel new category of separation science of ACQUITY UPC2, to improved workflow management found in Waters NuGenesis 8, to technology that can be used by a broader range of scientists from Waters’ Engineered Simplicity designed into our mass spectrometers. Even during periods of economic uncertainty, our customers are dependent upon their laboratories. Waters innovations allow those laboratories to improve their productivity, which is much more crucial during challenging economic times.”
Caputo while speaking about the company’s position in 2015 said, “Our vision is that Waters, through the ‘Science of What’s Possible’, will continue to bring purposeful innovation to laboratory-dependent organisations, delivering meaningful impact in terms of better healthcare, safer food and a cleaner environment. Through this, we hope to maintain our clear market-leadership position in our industry through 2015 and beyond.”
According to Caputo the company has very respectable competitors, but none share the focus and commitment to innovation. Caputo reasons that no other competitor has – or could have – delivered breakthrough innovations in chromatography and mass spectrometry, such as Waters’ ACQUITY UPLC, which changed the landscape of the separations science; Empower, the de facto standard chromatography data software; and ion mobility for mass spectrometry, for studying individual molecules in three-dimensions because “they don’t have our technology focus, our closeness to the customer, nor do they have the technological legacy we’ve built up.”
EP News Bureau — Mumbai