1-4 September, 2006 Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, India
    On Indigine, Tata And More
CEO M Vaman Rao speaks on his companies future and postioning






Founded in 2002, Indigene Pharmaceuticals is a fast-developing pharmaceutical company with a strategic focus to develop and deliver innovative molecular combination-based healthcare products. The new found interest shown by Tata, who have just picked up stake in the company says even more. Saying that his dream is to make his company a global biopharmaceutical company and trademark the new category of drugs, Indigene chairman and CEO M Vaman Rao is all set to promote progressive business practices in the healthcare industry. The company plans to launch four products in the US market soon. In an with a leading financial daily Roa reveals his company’s business focus and future plans.

What do you think that caught the attention and interest of Ratan Tata in Indigene?

I first met Ratan Tata about three years ago. While the meeting was scheduled for just half-an-hour, our discussions went on for a lengthy two-hour session. As such, he was impressed with the new product category called multiceutics. That was the beginning and now, Tatas have about 26% stake in Indigene. Over a period of time, we want to bring in additional revenues and may go for listing on the US and Indian stock exchanges.

What is the product portfolio of Indigene? When will these products be introduced in the US and Indian markets?

We are set to launch four consumer healthcare products in self-medication areas in the US initially followed by India and other geographies. The brands include Relaxene for stress, Memoryl for maintenance of memory, Pre-tense for nervous tension and Laxelle for gentle cramp-free laxative for women. These products will be launched in the US in the next two quarters and in India by 2007, subject to approval by the DCGI.

Being a small yet a fast growing biopharmaceutical company, how do you plan to position yourself?

We want to deliver innovative products in healthcare. Multiceutics is all about developing molecular combinations that can work simultaneously on multiple pathways associated with diseases and symptoms in human beings. We can call them smarter medicines and is a different approach from the classic industry approach that actually uses a single molecule to target a single pathway. Moreover, we have partnered with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for developing leads in selected disease areas. In order to meet the current domestic demand, we want to use the new-age pharma approach to address the needs.

We have made significant advances in building franchise-based prescription drug leads in the areas of respiratory and metabolic disorders, oncology and infectious diseases. We have some products that are undergoing clinical and pre-clinical development. We have also established strategic partnerships with global leaders in the US, Europe and India in order to support and accelerate product development, commercialisation and marketing activities.
What are the advances made by Indigene in terms of technology and product development?

We have a proprietary MMV technology platform that is designed to create optimal combinations of molecules that work simultaneously on multiple symptoms.

Besides, our knowledge base involves thousands of natural products combined with chemical products helping in our innovative programme in multiceutics. Apart from the four products to be launched in the United States, we have plans to launch 3-4 products every year depending on the regulatory approvals as we have the largest database of natural products.

We hope to see a healthy competition from all pharma majors including Pfizer, GSK, etc as they enter this space. Having unveiled the Human Genome code, most companies are working on the multiple, molecular approach rather than a single venture.

How are you positioning yourself in terms of marketing of these products?

We have alliances with all the leading retail chains including Walgreen in the US. Overall, we have access to about 30,000 pharmacy retail outlets as part of our marketing alliances.

With Tatas picking up stake, how do you see the growth opportunity for Indigene?
We see a phenomenal opportunity for these products. We want to build infrastructure, and create intellectual property rights (IPR) for our products. We prefer the ‘time to market’ and not on ‘cost to the market’.
With Tatas having about 26%-30% stake and Sun Group taking about 10% stake, we hope to achieve revenues of $1 billion by the next decade. The initial focus is to create brands and we are also looking at product acquisitions, in-licensing, out-licensing of molecules.
By late 2007, we are eyeing acquisitions of companies or products and in order to bring in additional revenues, we may go for a listing on the US and Indian stock exchanges as well as a public issue.


Date: 10-Jul-2006

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