Dr. Carani Sanjeevi is Professor at the Department of Medicine at Karolinska Institutet, where he focuses on diabetes research. At the same university, he is also appointed senior advisor at the Innovation Office. In addition, Dr. Sanjeevi is senior advisor for life science at Business Sweden in Stockholm. We got the opportunity to ask Dr. Sanjeevi a few questions on Sweden – India life science collaboration.
What makes a successful collaboration between Swedish and Indian companies?
R & D refers to Research and Development. This is a good example of Sweden-India cooperation in life science. Sweden is very good in research and India is very good in development. In my opinion, partnership between these two countries appears like marriage made in heaven. I am trying to make this marriage successful by bringing both sides together and explaining the best on both sides.
Sweden is a knowledge economy and invests a lot of money in research. The outcome is very interesting. Sweden is ranked as number one innovation country in the world. The nearest competitor is Switzerland. The main advantage of Sweden, compared to other countries is that the scientist who makes the innovation owns the innovation, not the institution he or she works. This is unique and unlike other countries in the world where the institution or university owns the discovery made by the scientist. There are systems put in place that helps the scientist to protect the IP of the discovery, and to start a company which can be housed in science parks/incubation centres within the university for its growth. Vinnova as well as other agencies like Innovationsbron, GU Holding etc provide start-up funds, early growth fund and after some years by Venture Cap funds.
There are several firms started like this in Sweden, these companies could be within pharma, biotech, medtech, diagnostic or digital health companies. From a historical perspective, Swedish multinational companies like Pharmacia and Astra were born from this model. All these companies and academic environment provide great opportunities for academy-industry collaborations, drug development, co-development, in-licensing including acquisition opportunities for Indian companies in Pharma and Biotech space.
Indian companies on the other hand, have invested heavily in drug development, mainly with focus on developing generic drugs. India hasn't invested heavily in creating innovation, like Sweden. As leading country in generic medicine, Indian pharma companies have become cash rich and their best opportunity to pursue innovation (in short term) is to partner with countries that have advanced in this area, like Sweden. India's expertise in drug development and Sweden's capability in innovation is a great partnership idea in R&D, where Sweden is 'R' and India is 'D'.
What makes Stockholm interesting as a source of collaboration for Indian companies?
Stockholm offers many unique opportunities in life science space. A lot of money is invested in creating new knowledge. For example, Karolinska Institutet has an annual budget of approximately 1 billion USD. This amount of investment ensure a continuous source of innovations, and many of these innovations are supported by university created structures like Karolinska Innovations AB, Karolinska Development AB, and Karolinska Institutet Science Park etc.
In addition to Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm has other centres of excellence to feed life science innovation which are Stockholm University and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. These institutions have come together to set-up a national resource called Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) that offers a lot of technological solutions to life science space.
What do you think would drive more Indian companies to Stockholm to look for collaborations?
Stockholm is an innovation hub with several key institutions that drive innovation. Further, the Swedish innovation system is unique. The law is friendly to promote such opportunities. The system is set in place to encourage innovation. All the universities in Sweden are not just educational institutions. The research they do constitutes nearly 80 percent of the university's activities, where as in India, almost all universities are educational.
In Sweden, all universities have innovation platforms and incubation centres, with the local municipality / district (through Stockholm Business Region or Stockholm Science City) coming in to help, by promoting the incubators / life science companies to industry partners abroad. These innovation centres are a major attraction for the Indian institutions, which drive them towards Stockholm for partnerships and collaboration.
Further, Nobel Prizes are major attractions for the scientific community to bring them to Stockholm. Business Sweden, which has offices in different cities also promote Stockholm and other Swedish clusters to Indian institutions, which is an important factor for promotion of Stockholm.
How long does it take to set up a business collaboration and can you do it from Sweden?
It typically takes about a year to get an investment to be accomplished from start to finish. Depending on the need and urgency, we have had collaboration agreement successfully signed in less than three months also. It is possible to get Indian companies to invest in Sweden working from Sweden. However, that requires a lot of networking and hand-holding, which we have successfully enabled over the past eight-nine years.
