Novo Nordisk to add 400 to Indian staff

Novo Nordisk (NVO [1]) will likely increase its workforce in India by 400 over the next three to five years, the drugmaker said in an interview with Danish daily Jyllands-Posten today. The developer, which currently employs 100 at its Indian site, says the Indian workforce is attractive because it's cheaper, but well educated.

"It is especially attractive in India that the higher-educated have been trained at English-language institutions," explained Chief Financial Officer Jesper Brandgaard. "Therefore we get a wide range of tasks performed--from the payment to suppliers and accounting tasks, the management of major medical trials on humans to studying the patent situation of the medicines under development."

But Brandgaard says the Danish drugmaker has no plans to cut its workforce at home. "The positions we expect to create in India in the coming years will reflect our overall growth," said the CFO. "It will free labour in Denmark, which can then be used for other things and this will enable us to use the saved costs for development of new drugs for example."

- here's the story [2] from Trading Markets
- more [3] on outsourcing from Copenhagen Post

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Novo Nordisk - Biotech Market Share Report [7]