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Indian pharma is increasingly adopting Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) as part of its efforts to streamline research processes, improve regulatory compliance, and accelerate innovation in the face of growing global competition. This digital transformation is seen as a strategic move to increase productivity, facilitate collaboration, and ensure data integrity, keeping up with international standards.
India is the sixth-largest producer of chemicals in the world. It employs over 2 million workforce to manufacture range of specialty chemicals, APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients), agrochemicals, and flavors and fragrances.
As the sector grows, it faces increased international competition and in this environment, functional excellence in R&D can offer a critical business advantage. Improving R&D efficiency will be essential to enable Indian chemical companies to scale their output to contend in the global marketplace. The lack of unified, organized workflows can soon become a challenge all of its own, with limited control of processes, documentation and information, aid Jun Liu, director, chemicals & materials solutions, Revvity Signals.
In recent years, ELNs have emerged as a powerful tool for streamlining R&D workflows and improving data management. These are designed to help researchers work more productively. The newest solutions rely on cloud technologies, delivered as software-as-a-service (SaaS), enabling data to be accessed and updated from any location – a key advantage for employees and their collaborators across the globe, he added.
Traditionally, R&D teams have relied on basic unstructured data capture tools spreadsheets, PDFs, email, digital images, and even paper notebooks – to organize their work for large, fast-growing teams. Increasingly, the sector is adopting ELN solutions, which provide a fully structured digital working environment to manage every aspect of R&D, from experiment design to AI-powered analytics and regulatory compliance.
There are several companies including the Mumbai-based Aarti Industries, PI Industries in Gurugram and Hyderabad’s Natco Pharma which have been using ELNs and have experienced significant productivity gains. These companies considered functionality, integration, and scalability when selecting an ELN.
Vinod Shivanand Honmute, head of R&D excellence said, “After deploying Signals Notebook, previously tacit knowledge is now available to everyone with a click of a button.”
In the case of PI Industries, it chose Signals Notebook as its core platform to enable collaboration within their company and with external partners. This solution, which includes Signals Notebook, provides what amounts to a shared language and resource, able to extend to third parties under full control of the PI Industries team.
According to Rama Seshagiri Rao, manager of data quality assurance, Natco Pharma, “To remain competitive in the generic pharma industry, we need to quickly complete R&D, technology transfer, lab validation, and plant validation, and then file the product with the different regulatory agencies. Signals Notebook is fulfilling all of these expectations, helping to accelerate product development and improve regulatory approvals processes.
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