What career options are available to a biotech master's graduate in India or internationally who wants to stay close to lab work while also exploring industry?

The range is broader than most biotech students realise at the point of graduation. For candidates who want to remain close to lab work, R&D roles and research associate or scientist positions at pharmaceutical companies, CROs, and biotech startups are the most direct path. Process development, which is more downstream than early research, focusing on scaling up processes for manufacturing, is another option that stays technical while being more industry-facing. For those who want to explore the commercial side of life sciences without completely leaving the scientific context, medical affairs, regulatory affairs, clinical operations, and business analysis roles at pharma and biotech companies all value scientific backgrounds.

• Management consulting in life sciences is a direction that values the technical credibility of a science degree while building business and strategy skills that compound in value over time.
• The most useful early-career move for someone uncertain between research and industry is a role that keeps one foot in each, a research associate position at a biotech startup, for example, exposes you to both the science and the commercial decisions happening around it, and gives you enough information to choose a direction with more certainty after a year or two.