Kendle Starts Expansion at Gandhinagar SEZ.

Kendle, world's fifth largest clinical research organisation(CRO), that started operations in Gujarat's first IT special economic zone (SEZ) Mindspace in June is all set to embark on its second phase of expansion soon.The CRO that started with around 50 people dealing with clinical data management, will expand to 103 by February next year, and eventually up to 300 associates.

"We have planned to upgrade this into a tier-I data center by next year and would eventually require six floors to house the entire operation", said Bharat Doshi, senior director, south east Asia/India, global clinical development, Kendle.

Kendle has now started its operations over 14,000 square feet at Raheja's Mindspace SEZ. "We would require around 84,000 square feet of space to house around 300 associates, and can scale up easily in the short term depending on demand", Doshi informed adding that Kendle has an understanding with the developer that it will take up additional space as the CRO ramps up. It would approximately need around 150 square feet per person.The Ahmedabad data center will serve as a back-end operation for data management, pharmacovigilence, bio-statistics, analytical work, medical writing and support of clinical research. Kendle has two other such back-end operations in Munich in Germany and Mexico.

The company that employs 3700 people worldwide across 30 countries started its India operations in 2004 with an office in Delhi. Besides Delhi, the CRO also has a clinical research facility at Ahmedabad that became operational last year and houses 28 people. The biggest chunk of work would be in the data management area, Doshi said. The company declined to give out investment figures for Indian operations citing that the Nasdaq listed company did not share country specific revenues. Globally, Kendle is a $416 million company.

Source : sify.com