New Delhi, Tuesday, June 22, 2010: The benefits of expansion in healthcare are rubbing off on the medical devices segment, triggering a war for talent. GE Healthcare, which estimates the Indian medical device industry at $3 billion and the imaging industry at $1 billion, says it is investing aggressively to tap the tremendous opportunity the Indian market offers.

“Some of our business segments could even triple their manpower,” says GE Healthcare South Asia HR director Ayaskant Sarangi.

Medical device companies are essentially the link between pharma and healthcare. These companies offer services in prevention of diseases, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of illness. Although the company was set up in India in 1990 and has 2,500 employees, GE expects a minimum 20% growth in its manpower this year. The company is hiring across levels in divisions, including sales, service, R&D, healthcare IT and supply. Mr Sarangi also said the company has reorganised its senior leadership team over the past few months to tap growth opportunities. This includes the addition of senior leadership staff from non-healthcare industries like telecom. “We hope to use their expertise to fuel the growth of the healthcare market in rural areas,” he added.

According to an estimate, the Indian healthcare industry is pegged at $38 billion and includes hospitals, medical devices and diagnostics. It is expected to generate 90 lakh jobs by 2012. The manpower demand of the healthcare industry is expected to increase by three-fold in the next seven years. Says Transearch International life science partner Tejinder Pal Singh, “Top scientific talent with good business acumen is scarce. And, because of this talent demand-and-supply mismatch, the opportunity is huge.”

He also said the majority of senior executive mandates have come from the healthcare segment compared to pharma companies in the past few months

Ref: Economic Times