Cross-continental travel has become the norm for Rashmi Barbhaiya these days. "There is so much activity," he enthuses as he steps off a red-eye flight from Bangalore to New York, his third trip of this kind in the past two months. His mission: to forge alliances with U.S. pharmaceutical companies eager to collaborate in the latest outsourcing trend to India - drug discovery and development research.

Barbhaiya is the cofounder and CEO of Advinus Therapeutics, a Bangalore-based drugmaker that began its life three years ago with the backing of India's largest conglomerate, the Tata Group. After a 25-year stint as one of the lead researchers with Bristol-Myers Squibb in New Jersey and as president of R&D for Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited in New Delhi, Barbhaiya was eager to run his own drug discovery and development shop at the epicenter of the world's outsourcing and emerging-innovation market. The result was Advinus, a company whose novel drug research is propelled by Indian scientists returning from abroad, domestic researchers and partnerships with global pharmaceuticals. Advinus is short for "Advantage India U.S.," an appropriate catchall for the wave of drug discovery alliances and outsourcing that has resulted in hundreds of pharmaceutical companies and related research contractors popping up all over India. Why this sudden interest?