Japanese biopharmaceutical major has set up its first Innovation Capability Center (ICC) in Asia in Bengaluru. This is Takeda’s third ICC after Slovakia and Mexico.
The ICC at Bengaluru will be the flagship ICC for Takeda and will focus on developing key technology capabilities by adopting data and digital solutions using an agile, patient-centric and solution-focused approach. The ICC will concentrate across domains including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and GenAI to enhance efficiency and predictive analytics in healthcare, device engineering and application Virtualization to drive innovation in product development and patient-centric solutions etc. Besides this, the focus will be on data science and visualization to enable data-driven decision-making for improved patient outcomes.
The centre will have around 750 people by the end of 2025 who will come from AI and Gen AI and Robotics backgrounds. Many people here will be working on developing software for medical devices. The Bengaluru centre will also be Takeda's largest centre when compared to the other two centrers in Slovakia (it opened in 2021) which has around 420 people and Mexico (which opened last year) has 180 people.
“The company has specialised in plasma drug therapy and also has manufacturing centres across the world. Its Slovakia centre is close to many manufacturing centres in Europe and will constantly help support them while the Mexico centre will help support the US market,” explained Gabriele Ricci, Chief Data and Technology Officer at Takeda during a briefing in Bengaluru.
The company already has a presence in India with an office in Gurugram near Delhi. It has been there for the last 13 years and the new ICC would be of great help to its Indian operations. Interestingly the company has a history that dates back to 1781. Takeda has been operating in approximately 80 countries including India.
The company’s mission in India focuses on ensuring sustainable access to health care, bolstered by strategic partnerships. Takeda has a diverse portfolio of therapeutics that address gastrointestinal disorders, rare diseases, immunology, oncology and vaccines.
Currently, the company is strongly focused towards discovering and delivering life-transforming treatments in its core therapeutic and business areas, including gastrointestinal and inflammation, rare diseases, plasma-derived therapies, oncology, neuroscience and vaccines. It is working with different partners to improve patient experience and advance the frontiers of treatment options. It has around 50,000 employees across the globe and has more than 25 plus manufacturing sites.