: Kerala Man Quit IAS Built India’s Biggest Manufacturer of Blood Bags #IndiaNEWS #Civil Servants How many of you can honestly say that a one-hour conversation changed the entire course of your life?

Kerala Man Quit IAS Built India’s Biggest Manufacturer of Blood Bags #IndiaNEWS #Civil Servants
How many of you can honestly say that a one-hour conversation changed the entire course of your life?
In May 1983, Balagopal Chandrasekhar visited the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences & Technology in Thiruvananthapuram out of curiosity after reading news reports that its research and development (R&D) wing had indigenously developed blood bags to facilitate blood transfers.
At the time, he was a 30-year-old officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).
There he met Professor AV Ramani, who at the time was heading the institute’s R&D wing. It was a serendipitous meeting, but the conversation that followed inspired Balagopal to quit the IAS a few months later and start his own venture Penpol (Peninsula Polymers) Limited. In 1999, Penpol entered into a joint venture with the Terumo Corporation of Japan. Today, Terumo Penpol Ltd is the biggest manufacturer of blood bags in India and one of the world’s biggest makers of high-tech bio-medical devices.
So, what did Professor Ramani tell Balagopal on that fateful morning of May 1983?
Speaking to The Better India, Balagopal recollects the passionate arguments Ramani made in favour of local industry leveraging the fruits of Indian science.
“Professor Ramani believed that Indian industry was missing out on game-changing research of national institutions like the Sree Chitra Institute because of the false notion that Indian scientific and technological capabilities were of inferior quality. This false notion, he believed, prevented many Indian technologists and industrialists from taking their ideas further. Citing the example of the Sree Chitra Institute, he said that it was making bio-medical devices that very few companies in the world could access. He felt that anyone starting a venture based on the technologies they were developing would be able to get into the ground floor of a vast and expanding market of healthcare products,??? recalls Balagopal.
It’s imperative to note that this conversation was happening in the early 1980s, when economic policy was predominantly driven by ideas like import substitution and saving foreign exchange. By having a domestic manufacturer making high quality blood bags, India could enable a quality blood transfusion service without losing too much foreign exchange.
“However, my main motivating factor was not saving foreign exchange, but taking Indian science and technology to the world. I had finally found meaning and purpose in my life,??? he recalls. He quit the IAS just six years into the job when the private sector did not offer many employment opportunities. Moreover, Balagopal was venturing into a market he knew little about.

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