The US-based filtration firm opened a life sciences centre of excellence in May this year in Bangalore. Prior to this Pall just had a small filter validation lab at the site, ran as a joint venture with a local Indian firm, however, Pall now has full ownership of the new centre.

"We chose to expand our presence in India because of the increasing amount of activity and development in the pharmaceutical industry here of late," said Pall India spokesperson LP Raman at the recent Interphex trade show held in Mumbai.

Since May the facility has been undergoing an internal evaluation to bring it in line with the company's comparable UK operations. This process is almost complete and the site will come on full stream in the next couple of weeks, said Raman.

The centre will supply the pharmaceutical marketplace with a range of fluid management solutions including a validation laboratory; a technical support and services division; an instrument services offering; and a staff training service; to cater for the growing need for such support amongst Indian companies who are seeking out business in the highly regulated drug export market.

Validation is currently the most popular of these services, said Raman. "A lot of Indian companies are now interested in having their processes validated in order to be able to sell their products to regulated markets."

In addition, the new site also offers process proteomics, a service that Raman hailed as being "unique in the India. Until now, Indian companies had to have process proteomics done outside the country," he said.

"This allows them to have the process done faster and more easily." However, he did not provide any quantification of this, nor any comment on price.

The firm will assist companies in developing biopharmaceutical purification processes, based on a protein chip methodology, said Raman, adding that Pall already provides this offering in Europe and the US.

"Any biopharmaceutical firm can use this service but there are currently only one or two companies doing biopharmaceutical R&D in India, so at the present, companies developing biosimilars would be our primary market area right now."

He added that although the Indian centre is currently only serving domestic companies, in the future Pall may look to expand its services to firms in nearby Asian countries and other multinational companies doing biopharma R&D.

The site employs 30 people and there are plans to hire more in the coming months, he said.