India is soon to become host to Sanofi’s largest global capacity center as the French pharma plans to spend €400 million ($437 million) and more than double its workforce in Hyderabad.
The company is planning to invest the first €100 million ($109 million) by 2025, according to a Wednesday release. Over the next two years, the site will employ up to 2,600 workers in total, making it the largest of Sanofi’s four global hubs. According to The Hindu, the hub currently employs around 1,000 staffers.
Sanofi describes its capacity centers as “nerve centers,” in which it runs R&D, manufacturing and commercialization tasks linked to its global supply chain. These centers enable “centralization and modernization” that allows for scaling up, the company said. The other three centers are in Bogotá, Colombia; Budapest, Hungary; and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
New employees in Hyderabad will be onboarded to be familiar with AI, which will be used across Sanofi’s value chain, chief digital officer Emmanuel Frenehard said in a statement. “Our ambition is to be the first biopharma company powered by Artificial Intelligence at scale,” he added.
Sanofi has made moves in AI in the past few months. In May, the company teamed up with OpenAI and Formation Bio to build AI tools for drug development. In October last year, Sanofi also partnered with BioMap to use its AI in drug discovery.
The Hyderabad capacity center launched in 2019 as a medical hub. Sanofi stages clinical trials in India, with a manufacturing facility in Goa that makes products to be shipped worldwide. It currently employs around 5,000 staffers in the country, according to its website.