After Infy and Wipro, Biocon says Bye-Bye Bangalore

Shaw blasts B'lore for bad infrastructure
After Wipro and Infosys, it is biotech-major Biocon says that it has had it with Bangalore's crumbling infrastructure.
CNBC-TV18

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw is the latest corporate honcho to point out why incremental growth at Biocon needs to move out of Bangalore. It is especially ironical since Biocon till date has launched its entire operations only out of this city.

The complaints on the infrastructure situation go beyond the state of the roads and traffic congestion. Shaw says Biocon has its own water treatment plant and 100% of the power generated at the campus is done in house. She adds that power from the Karnataka electricity board is often used just as a backup.

Shaw said the state government despite soliciting and gaining the participation of the corporate sector in infrastructure projects wasn't completing them in a time bound manner. And its precisely because of this callous attitude that Shaw says she's now actively considering moving some of Biocon's research services and manufacturing operations into a cities like Chennai, Pune or even Hyderabad.

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairperson, Biocon said, "Right now we have made a very very massive investment in Bangalore of close to Rs 750 crores. So its very unlikely that we would suddenly be addressing an investment of that magnitude. But Certainly the kind of Rs 100 crore investments that would be that we could be looking at in the near future is something that might just be done elsewhere."

Shaw said Bangalore ceases to remain a viable option for Biocon in the future. She says minor improvements in the city's infrastructure like decongesting the traffic on the arterial and the only road leading to Biocon and Electronic City can improve the situation. That aside, she asked for work on the metro project and the international airport to be concluded as soon as possible.