Thanks to the effort of Ravi Shankar and Ajay Kumar, Bihar has entered the global knowledge industry with a German MNC, Biobase, deciding to open its production and training centre in the state. Biobase helps resolve the bioinformatic challenges of its customers worldwide. It helps rationalise drug development time and cost and improves the quality and outcome of drug development research.

Persistent effort and perfect collaboration between Ravi who is a Bihari Bioinformatician from Biobase and the non conformist approach of Principal Secretary Ajay Kumar ,Biobase CEO Michael Tysiak flew down here on Sunday to discuss the final details of opening the centre with state science and technology department.

We will be the local consultants of the company and facilitate in the provision of infrastructure needed to open the centre," said department principal secretary Ajay Kumar Thakur. He described the development as a major lead for the state towards integration with knowledge industry. "In India the company has its office in Bangalore. The very fact that it has chosen Bihar for expansion is a very positive development and it will boost the image of the state," he said.

"This is the first time a top-knowledge product is going to set-up a base in Bihar," Thakur said. He said his department will be associated with Biobase in setting up an academy and research centre. "The centre will take 30 students and train them in biological database. The students will either be absorbed in Biobase or will get highly-paid jobs in other companies since there is a dearth of biotechnology experts," he said, adding if everything works out well, the company should start its production centre within two months.

It’s heartening to see this kind of effort; we need more sons of Bihar like Ravi who can take the lead to bring more organizations to Bihar. What is really comforting to see is the fact that few years back majority of bihari folks would not even mention that they belong to Bihar and now we see a complete change of situation and we have guys like you trying to reverse the situation by bringing these MNC's to Bihar .

This should definitely open the eyes of many of us who still keep cribbing that first the ground realities need to change in bihar and then they can initiate the process of inviting companies or investing in Bihar. This is a welcome move and it will go a long way in showcasing the changes in Bihar and also help in tapping the immense human resource capital of Bihar.