Illumina Celebrates Opening of Global Capability Center in Bengaluru
Dec 06, 2024
BusinessWire India
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], December 6: Illumina Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN), a global leader in DNA sequencing and array-based technologies, today celebrated the opening of a global capability center in Bengaluru, India, to grow its global workforce, deepen technology talent in the region, and support a global customer base. This planned move was originally announced in early September.
The Illumina office is located within Bengaluru's Manyata Technology Park, a complex shared among global technology, health care, and biopharma companies. More than 80 Illumina employees currently work at the Manyata facility, with more than 200 employees anticipated at the site by the end of 2025. Illumina also operates a customer solutions center in Bengaluru.
Illumina's investment in a global capability center reflects a growing trend of companies establishing operations in India. More than 3000 multinational companies have joined India's vibrant innovation ecosystem, building highly skilled teams to enable global scaling of business processes and to drive growth.
"We are thrilled to invest in India and expand our presence in Bengaluru," said Illumina Chief Information Officer Carissa Rollins. "We look forward to tapping into India's pool of high-caliber talent to bring forward diverse cultural perspectives that can drive organizational growth and innovation."
The growing adoption of genomics in India holds tremendous potential for public health and personalized medicine for the region's nearly 1.5 billion people. It is estimated that up to 96 million people in India have a rare disease, and one in nine people in India are likely to develop cancer in their lifetime.
"India is a country where Illumina can thrive and help Bengaluru become a center for genomic discovery. It is known for its biotech infrastructure, skilled labor, life-sciences-based resources, and supportive public policies to advance genomic innovation," said Kevin Pegels, chief of global operations. "Expanding our global footprint allows us to operate and show up for our customers as one Illumina."
Illumina's workforce strategy is to build global teams with the skills and capabilities to enable innovation at scale and strengthen the company's impact around the world. In addition to two sites in India, Illumina has a sequencing center in Cambridge, England, and an innovation center in Singapore, along with commercial offices in Asia, Oceania, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas.
Illumina's new global capability center adds to an already growing footprint in the region. In 2023, Illumina opened a new office and state-of-the-art genomics lab--known as an Illumina Solutions Center--in Bengaluru. The facility provides training and education and features a fully equipped laboratory with the latest next-generation-sequencing technologies.
In recent years, Illumina has also supported initiatives to increase access to sequencing capability in India. This includes technology for the Genome India Project and philanthropic funding with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation to support COVID-19 surveillance. In December 2023, Illumina launched the Global Health Access Initiative to better equip countries to perform pathogen sequencing locally. This program addresses key international logistics and supply chain challenges, strengthens health systems, enables better preparedness, and empowers countries to manage their own priority health threats.
Illumina's other philanthropic support in India includes the company's early COVIDSeq™ collaboration with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research's Institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology in New Delhi, its donation of $1 million USD in sequencing capabilities to Mumbai's Kasturba Hospital for COVID surveillance, and its use of whole-genome sequencing to detect drug resistance in tuberculosis at P. D. Hinduja Hospital.
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