Life Sciences sector (Pharma, Bio Pharma and Clinical Research) is one of the 5 highest priority sectors of Niti Aayog. The sector currently employs around 9 lac workforce in around 8,000 active manufacturing units, clustered in about a dozen locations. Exhibiting double digit growth, 50% of its current revenue of $38 bn in revenue is derived from exports. India in fact is regarded as a ‘Pharmacy to the World’, having 11% global market share by volume.
Alongside others, this critical sector too is afflicted with an acute shortage of skilled workforce. In order to address this, the Life Sciences Sector Skill Development Council (LSSSDC) was established in 2014 by NSDC in co-operation with CII, with Sri Satish Reddy (Chairman Dr Reddy’s Lab) as its Chairman.
Although the sector has over 240 distinct job roles, just 20 take up almost 70% of job volume. Half of these are at college (graduate and above) level. Accordingly, LSSSDC has been focusing on developing a reservoir of skilled workforce, focusing on the major 20 job roles, spread across Manufacturing, QC, Sales & Marketing and other verticals. Thrust has been on 3 buckets of activity
- organizing skilling youth at school, college level for the different entry level positions as per Industry defined/ validated standards known as ‘National Occupation Standards’
- triggering ‘Apprenticeship’
- assessing and certifying currently employed workforce as per Industry standards, under Government’s ‘Recognition of Prior Learning’ (RPL) program
In the 5 years since becoming operational, and leveraging the various active Associations in the sector, all of which are on its Governing Body, LSSSDC has accomplished skilling over 35,000 candidates, using also Simulation/ VR based modules (the only one doing so in the Sector Skill Council Eco system) for high capex manufacturing job roles; enrolled around 8,000 Apprentices; and certified close to 50,000 already employed workforce. This has been accomplished by developing a pool of close to 500 certified trainers. Importantly, the Council has facilitated placement of over 20,000 candidates across job roles—in reputed companies in the sector.
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LSSSDC has forged close connect with Industry, supporting as it does some 500 organisations (including all major employers) in various areas of skilling. Recently, an agreement has been reached with Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) wherein, starting the coming academic year, select skilling modules will be introduced as electives in the final year, with scores to count in the final score.
Alongside, students in Pharma colleges/ Univesities will be encouraged to take up Apprenticeship. All this with view to ‘skill advancement’. The Council is also working closely with DBT, to boost number of skilled workforce for the crucial and fast growing Bio Technology sector. Finally, a number of prominent Pharma companies such as Zydus, Macleods, Granules have joined hands with LSSSDC to set up ‘Centres of Excellence’ in major clusters.
As may be visualized Pharma is one of the handful of sectors, where demand has been stretched in current Pandamic. Since India is dependent on China for a high percentage of APIs (Active Pharma Ingredients), a sharp rise in price and shrinking of supply chain, has led to jostling Indian API producers into finding short and longer term measures to raise capacity and minimize dependence on low priced Chinese imports. Latest decision to lift exports in certain categories of medicines (eg Hydroxy Chloroquine, HCQ ) that could be useful for COVID has led to specific producers maximizing/ raising capacity, in order to meet global demand. Finally, alongside similar activity in world’s leading Pharma companies, select Indian Pharma and Bio Pharma Players too are working on possible vaccines/solutions to COVID epidemic.
Post lockdown, and in the short term, we can expect this play-out to continue, with Bulk Drug Manufacturers going flat out to maximize output of APIs; companies involved in manufacturing medicines such as HCQ, producing to capacity, and firms with R&D base continuing to put emphasis on research, and then rushing to tie up with any overseas entities that maybe the first ones to find a suitable vaccine. We also believe that companies may wish to supplement workforce in for example Medical Sales Reps, and Supply Chain personnel, so that certain drug related knowledge and medicines can be reached to far flung areas, as soon as situation so permits. In the interim, Telesales activity may get a boost. Overall, Make in India coupled with companies reviewing their China strategy, Ayushman Bharat, recently announced API and medical device package, and Biotechnology Cluster initiatives would be impacting growth in this sector positively.
In this backdrop, LSSSDC has laid out a 6 point agenda to support the Life Sciences sector:
- explore E platforms leveraging technology at each stage of skilling chain—useful in the current social distancing context, but also post lockdown. This will boost scale and speed of skilling
- since an increased demand of Apprentices and Workforce may be expected, Council will be doing all possible to meet that. In particular, LSSSDC is attaching great importance to being a strong Partner to companies such as Zydus and IPCA—currently in forefront of global war against COVID. Special projects involving Industry in ‘Recruit, Train, Deploy’ model can be launched
- explore and launch special projects in MSME Pharma Industry clusters for upskilling, with support from NSDC. Currently no funding means are available to address skill shortfalls in this crucial Industry segment
- LSSSDC has recently been approached by Department of BioTechnology (DBT) with whom it is working very closely, to take on entire spectrum of Bio Technology Skill Development activity, leading to greater convergence and synergy in all skilling activity in this vital spectrum
- working even more closely with BDMA (Bulk Drug Manufacturers Association), also represented on its Governing Body, to support ramping up bulk drug capacity –to minimize dependence on China for APIs. Plans are afoot to involve BDMA directly in skilling and setting up a COE in Hyderabad (the nerve center of Bulk Drugs) focused on needs of this segment
- conducting workshops for manufacturing, quality and engineering professionals for boosting GMP awareness, Environment, Health and Safety guidelines and Cleaning validations. This will further strengthen the sector, and better position it for any future such Pandemics
In short LSSSDC, already and actively helping the Life Sciences sector, finds itself well positioned to further support this vital sector in the ongoing battle with Covid 19.
(Disclaimer:Â The views expressed in the article above are those of the author Mr. Ranjit Madan, CEO, LSSSDC and Joint Apprenticeship Advisor, Life Sciences Sector. The matter and intent of this article has not been edited by skillreporter.com. SkillReporter shall not be responsible for any damage if caused to any person/organization directly or indirectly.)
