Bio tech funding in India

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CONTENTS

Cover Story

28Funding Drought

Despite the market showing signs of recovery post the global downturn, innovation in biotech is stunted with investors continuing to be tightfisted. Industry experts are concerned that the situation might get worse if corrective steps are not taken

A Crisis in Making?

44India drives biotech innovation

The government of India has implemented several funding initiatives to strengthen the growth of biotech sector in the country. All these efforts drive innovation in biotech R&D

Funding Scenario

40Interview

“Not having funds in place has not impacted us”— Tania Fernandez, director, Burrill & Company, India

BioAnalysis

12Bt brinjal: Still in freezerA special report on the status of Bt brinjal in India

BioSpecial

48India steps closer to personalized medicine

As the knowledge of genetics and genomics rapidly expand, a personalized approach to healthcare is becoming increasingly important

6-7 BIO Content.indd 6 10/5/2010 11:05:40 AM


In early 2000, Indian industry soothsayers had predicted the success story of the information

technology (IT) and telecommunica-tion industry replicating the success in biotechnology (BT) space. Venture capitalists and private equity (PE) investors had every reason to be bull-ish about this sector, considering that there was no dearth of ideas, coupled with the availability of a huge skilled talent pool. Over the past five years, India has seen a sizeable investment of over `4,600 crore ($1 billion) in this area, by both foreign and domes-tic players. The Venture Intelligence survey of leading private equity (in-cluding venture capital) fund man-agers, suggests a strong appetite amounting to over ̀ 9,200 crore (about $2 billion) in investments that have already been made in the healthcare and life sciences (HLS) industry, over the past five years.

In 2010, the tables have drastically turned. “Investments over the past one year have been negligible, and today, there is no money available for this sector, especially for early stage

funding. Even if a company gets its first round of funding, my worry then becomes as to whether they have the ability to raise their second round of funding,” adds a well-known investor, heading a reputable funding firm.

Ironically, globally, life sciences remains the number one segment for investors, compared to other sectors. Findings from the MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Associa-tion (NVCA), based on the data from

Thomson Reuters, suggest that for all industries, US venture capitalists invested `21,620 crore ($4.7 billion) in 681 deals during the first quarter

of 2010. Life sciences again captured the largest share at `5890 crore ($1.3 billion) in 160 deals. (though sector investment was down 26 percent; and 21 percent in deals, since the last quarter of 2009)

Biotechnology, by the nature of the industry requires angel invest-ments, and that is severely lacking in the country. In India, there are only a handful of VC/PE firms proactive in this space, while angel investors

CoverStory

Despite the market showing signs of recovery post the global downturn, innovation in biotech is stunted with investors continuing to be tightfisted. Industry experts are concerned that the situation might get worse if corrective steps are not taken

A Crisis in Making?

Funding Drought

cover story1.indd 28 10/4/2010 4:03:30 PM


CoverStory

in this sector are close to zilch. Con-sidering this situation, industry ex-perts unanimously opine that if this persists, there will be a time when the concept of VC funding itself will dwindle away. “Major venture capi-talist firms are already looking at the option of getting funds through strategic alliances,” comments Dr Ni-

tin Deshmukh, CEO, Private Equity, Kotak Private Equity Group (KPEG), Mumbai.

Dead End In Funding Until now, there have been mainly

PE/VC late-stage funding deals in the life sciences sector, mostly in the pharmaceutical, and in domestic for-mulations which give quick returns. Investors—both VC and PE alike—are yet to understand the dynamics of the sector, because such investors typically have a finance background, with the end motive of getting re-turn on investment (RoIs). “In the US and Europe, investors looking at the life sciences sector have an in-depth knowledge of the industry op-erations. They spend years studying and scrutinizing this sector; and it is most likely that there are multiple PhD holders in the team. In India, you will hardly find investors with such a profile,” says Ajit Mahadevan,

partner, Life Sciences Practice, Ernst & Young.

Lately, there has been an aware-ness among investors on the need to educate themselves about the indus-try; but there has not been any dras-tic change in the mindset. “Investors take it for granted that the dynamics of the sector would be the same as the pharmaceutical sector. Biotechnol-ogy, on the other hand, is a complex sector, the time lines are longer, the risk is larger; and the expenditure is four times that of the investment in generics. That is when they take a backseat,” comments Mani Iyer, man-aging director, Iyers West Ventures Management.

The typical structure that the fund-ing industry follows is not amenable for life sciences as the gestation pe-riod and scale up time line is much longer, and with inherent risks. “Spe-cialist life sciences funds are still not able to understand and work their risk mitigation strategies; whether it is on the pipeline, the supply chain, the clinical trial stage, the product li-ability or the other regulatory risks. Thus, the time-to-fund is an issue,” adds Kapil Khandelwal, director and CEO, Makven Capital, a niche in-vestment banking and advisory serv-ices firm.

Ideally in the past, a VC in India would fund a start-up to take the product/molecule up to a certain stage, and then license it to a ma-ture pharmaceutical company. “The situation is tougher now, because the funds to take a product to phase I are unavailable. These VCs are now being replaced by large scale pharmaceutical companies. The problem with a pharma company funding a start-up, is the long time lines involved in raising that fund,” adds Mahadevan.

Start-up companies face investors who are often uncomfortable with

the dual challenge associated with new ventures and scientific/techni-cal risks. In a market where funds have increasingly focused on low-risk growth capital opportunities, it is tough for investors to consider venture investments. “The key chal-lenges to growth in HLS investments are, very few investors with an ap-preciation of the difficulties with R&D, low-risk appetite among Indi-an investors, besides, a paucity of ex-perienced talent and entrepreneurs in the sector,” says Dr Jasmin Patel, managing director, Fidelity Growth Partners – India.

Tania Fernandez, director, India, Burrill & Company, gives the other side of the story. “The biggest chal-lenge that the industry faces, is in recognizing what the next wave for the Indian life sciences industry will be. Just take a snapshot of the deals that are being done today, or over the past two-to-three years. They can, with some exceptions, be character-ized as generics, CRAMS, pharma-ceutical and hospital deals. We will have a fair amount of success in this space especially generics, but where do we go from there? So this should

The typical structure that the funding industry follows is not amenable for life sciences, as the gestation period and scale up time line is much longer; and with inherent risks

A Crisis in Making?

Start-up companies face investors who are often uncomfortable with the dual challenge associated with new ventures and scientific/technical risks


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CoverStory

not be a question of what challenges does the industry face, in terms of fi-nancing, it should be a broader ques-tion. If all the capital goes towards these kind of deals, then what about the large number of struggling com-panies that are still trying to figure out how to get the business to the next level”.

Funds and grants provided by the Indian government, mainly through DBT and DST, with philanthropic organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Wellcome Trust, have perhaps been the saving grace for start-up companies. Sujay Shetty, associate director Pharma Life Sciences Advisory–Corporate Finance, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, says, “The situation is such that oth-er than government funding, there has been absolutely no funding avail-able. Early stage VC funding is negli-gible. Presently, we see no change in the situation. Investor firms in India mainly look at matured funding. The nature of the sector is such that there is no angel funding available. In ad-dition to this, the option of licensing, has not been explored by Indian com-panies.”

“The last few years have seen a compression of the funding in early stage ventures; and the risk and in-vestment appetite to such ventures. The funding tap is just about opening

up. However, till such time they are Yo-Yo (you are on your own)!” adds Khandelwal.

Status Quo for Most Investment Firms

Post the global downturn, mar-kets have opened up, and companies might have reported decent quar-terly performances; but in terms of funding initiatives into the sector, there have been no groundbreaking numbers in the past year. Dr Patel says, “There has been a very limited amount of investment that has gone

into traditional biotechnology compa-nies. Only three investments come to mind over the past year in the areas of serums and vaccines, informatics-driven drug discovery and genomics applications for therapeutics.” Invest-ments have also been made in low-risk segments like diagnostics. Clean technology is another growing area of investment for investors. “Globally, in 2007-08, the total VC funding was around `32,200 crore ($7 billion); and this dropped to `27,600 crore ($6 bil-lion) in the following year. Now there are signs of revival. Of this, biotech-nology funding in India has been low, with VC/PE investment, touching a figure of `920 crore ($200 million) and 30-40 percent of that went into

the biopharma industry,” says Ma-hadevan. Clearly, investor confidence in the sector has been stalled.

Presently, there are a handful of VC/PE firms in the country looking seriously at the life sciences sector—Kotak Private Equity Group (KPEG), ICICI Ventures, Nadathur Holdings, Venture East, Barring Private Eq-uity, Evolvence India Life Sciences Fund, IDG Ventures India, Tata Capital, India Value Fund, Standard Chartered Private Equity, i2india Ventures, to name a few. A cursory glance will reveal that investment has not been significant post-2008, except for KPEG, which invested in Bharat Serums & Vaccines (BSV) in 2009 (OrbiMed Advisors also made an investment for an undisclosed amount in BSV); while Tata Capital Private Equity invested `46 crore ($10 million) in Intas Biopharmas. There are a number of ongoing dis-cussions, but no concrete deals for funding have been implemented.According to a report published joint-ly by Yes Bank and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), since 2006, only six investments worth `96.6crore ($21 million) have been made in the medical device sector. Trivitron Group’s ambitious venture of creat-ing a technology park was financed by ePlanet Ventures and HSBC Pri-

vate Equity, with a net investment of `50.6 crore ($11 million) in November 2007.

KPEG is a specialist Indian pri-vate equity firm of Kotak Mahindra Group, focused on helping emerg-ing corporates and mid-size enter-prises. Today, it has three types of funds namely, India Growth Fund I, India Growth Fund II and Venture Capital for Life Sciences. It has al-located about `460 crore ($100 mil-lion) in the life sciences sector. The firm started investing in biotechnol-ogy in 2000, with companies like Bio-con, Avesthagen and Syngene in its portfolio. Later, KPEG also consid-ered companies specializing in global manufacturing and services. Today,

Most attractive sectors for investments

Diagnostic Services Medical Devices / Equipment

Hospital Chains Wellness Products and Services CROs Medical Tourism Dental Chains Biotechnology Alternative Medicine Chains Telemedicine Vaccines Drug Discovery and R&D Pharmaceuticals (generics)

Source: Venture Intelligence

A Crisis in Making?

“In the US and Europe, investors looking at the life sciences sector have an in-depth knowledge of the

industry operations. In India, you will hardly find investors with such a profile”

—Dr Nitin Deshmukh, CEO, Private Equity,Kotak Private Equity Group (KPEG), Mumbai


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its current investments include Siro Clinpharm, Metahelix Life Sciences, VLife Sciences, Rubicon Research and Indus Biotech. “Our allocation for life sciences remains the same. We have invested in Bharat Serums & Vaccines last year. But otherwise, no other investments in the sector,” adds Deshmukh.

Venture East looks at providing

venture capital funds and incubation funds. It was instrumental in provid-ing early stage funding for start-up overseas companies looking at en-tering India, Evolva Biotech being one of them. In 2003, it was the first company to bring out biotechnology-focused venture capital fund. Invest-ments include cross-border deals, drug discovery, biodiesel and health-care infrastructure. This apart, in 1997, Venture East instituted the APIDC Venture Capital Fund which

looked at investments in the pharma-ceutical space.

Bangalore-based Nadathur Hold-ings (founded by NS Raghavan, founder & former joint managing director of Infosys Technologies), is another name that has made a con-siderable number of investments in the life sciences sector. In 2005, to focus on human health-related op-portunities, the firm dedicated, from their portfolio, a specialized domain-specific platform in HLS. Thus far, it has invested over `230 crore ($50 million) through this platform, into ventures that target not only the supply side (R&D), but also the de-mand side (healthcare) of the value chain. Nadathur’s portfolio ranges from agri-biotech and drug discovery, to healthcare services and hospitals. In 2007, the firm funded the bio-agri start-up, Metahelix to the tune of `6.5 crore ($1.4 million). Kotak Ma-hindra Private Equity Fund chipped in with another `5 crore (about $1 million). Nadathur Holdings and Ko-tak Mahindra also jointly invested another tranche of `16 crore ($3.5

million) in Metahelix. Other invest-ments for Nadathur Holdings include Connexios Life Sciences, a drug dis-covery company, and Abexome Bio-sciences, a biotechnology company specializing in the production of re-combinant proteins, antibodies and immunoassays. However, the number of deals in the sector by the firm has diminished since then.

ICICI Ventures made their invest-

ments in Arch Pharmalabs, Malladi Drugs, Bharat Biotech, I-Ven Pharma (Dr Reddy’s Labs), RFCL, Metropo-lis, Perlecan, Avesthagen, Biocon, Medicorp, Intas Pharma and Swiss Biosciences between 2000 and 2007 —when the industry was in its ‘sun-shine phase’ (except for Medicorp and Intas Pharma which was made in the 1990s). Post-2007, investments have diminished again.

“We primarily deal with very early stage (pre-seed and seed) invest-ments, and we see a lot of discussion, but limited change in funding,” adds Deepam Mishra, CEO of i2india Ventures. The Bangalore-based firm is now looking at roughly 50-60 per-

cent investment in healthcare, and the rest into clean-technology. “Spe-cific areas of interest to us include diagnostics, medical devices, screen-ing technologies, chronic care ap-plications. Specific focus is to bring game-changing low-cost products for democratizing healthcare in India, as current technologies are mostly West-centric and hence available only to the upper end of the popula-

tion,” adds Mishra.

Angel Investment The concept of angel investment

into the sector is at an all time low. “A biotechnology venture requires an ecosystem, and not just an idea. Unfortunately, that does not exist in India, and is the reason for few angel investors looking at this sec-

“In the US and Europe, investors looking at the life sciences sector have an in-depth knowledge of the industry operations. In India, you will hardly find investors with such a profile”

—Ajit Mahadevan, partner, Life SciencesPractice, Ernst & Young

98 total Investments worth $1266 million (2005-2010)

8 PE investments worth $137 million (Jan 2009-Aug 2010)

5 VC investments worth $16 million (Jan 2009-Aug 2010)Source: Venture Intelligence

Investment in Biotech and Pharma

A Crisis in Making?

“Specialist life sciences funds are still not able to understand and work their risk mitigation

strategies; whether it is on the pipeline, the supply chain, the clinical trial stage, the product liability or the other regulatory risks. Thus, the time-to-fund is an issue,”

—Kapil Khandelwal, director and CEO,Makven Capital


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tor,” adds Mahadevan. This is where churning out innovation at the edu-cational level, and having a strong industry-academia relationship, matters. Experts opine that the en-vironment in the country is such that it does not encourage innovation, as well as angel investment. Even reg-ulations for angel investments are vague.

Iyer believes that apart from ideas of entrepreneurs, initiative should come from angel investors. “It is not about the number of angel investors in the sector, what will ultimately matter, is the passion of these inves-tors to understand the ideas, and make investments,” adds Iyer.

A strong industry-academia collab-oration will make a world of a differ-ence in attracting angel investments in India. While in the US and Europe, where the academia has a crucial role in the growth of the biotechnology in-dustry, India sees both the segments working as two watertight com-partments. In UK for instance, the strong nexus between industry and academia, has created a romping suc-cess for the industry. The biotechnol-ogy sector has a strong record of col-

laborating with universities to exploit the science base, and offers about 400 PhD studentships. Today, all the stakeholders in the region—which in-cludes the industry, the academia, the NHS and the UK Government—have come together in the cross exchange of ideas, and to bring forth a condu-cive environment for businesses to thrive. This automatically attracts angel investments.

Iyer gives a feasible suggestion. “I would suggest we divide the proc-esses in science, and have service centers (or specialized centers), each having its own specializations and technical expertise, distributed all over the country. Each center, by fo-

cusing its entire efforts on one spe-cialization, will bring out a better output, because it will be backed by a strong team of highly skilled spe-cialized experts. The investment required will be anywhere between `5-`10 crore (about $1-$2.2 million), and this is where an angel investor will come forward. A PE will never look at projects in this investment range. These service centers can be interconnected to each other,” adds

Iyer. This model has its advantages which includes a higher RoI, as they are highly specialized. Once the cash flow begins, these units can al-ways spin out into an independent company.

Overseas investmentThere have been a number of over-

seas firms who have, in the past, pitched in to make large scale invest-ments into India; but till date, noth-ing concrete has shown up. Burill & Co, Fidelity International, HSBC, Orbimed, JP Morgan Private Equity fund, MPM Capital were all bullish about the Indian market.

The lack of understanding of the Indian market is cited as one of the prime reasons. “Such firms have not yet understood the market. They look at less risk and quick returns, which is not possible,” adds Shetty. In addi-tion to this, liquidity is less in India,

AIG Investment CorporationsAcer Technology VenturesAPIDC Venture CapitalBaring Pvt Equity Partners (India)BTS Investment AdvisorsCarlyle India AdvisorsCDC Capital PartnersCanbank Venture Capital FundChrysalis Investment Advisors (I)Eur Indiae4e LabsFrontline VenturesFinish Development FundNetherlands Development FinanceG W CapitalGlobal Technology VenturesGVFLHSBC Private Equity ManagementHenderson Global InvestorsICICI Bank TFGIntel AsiaIDFC Asset ManagementICF AdvisorsInfinity Technology InvestmentsIndian Direct Equity AdvisorsIL&FS Investment ManagersJumpstartup Fund AdvisorsICICI Venture Funds Management2iCapital (India)Small Enterprises Assistance FundSIDBI Venture CapitalUTI Venture Funds ManagementVIEW AdvisorsWestbridge Capital PartnersAsian Development BankThe Development Bank of SingaporeSchroder Capital Partners (Asia)Standard Chartered BankGIC Special InvestmentsTDA Capital PartnersTemasek HoldingsWalden International InvestmentVertex ManagementWarburg Pincus

Courtesy: Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE)

Institutional Investors, VC Firms & Banks in BioFunding

CoverStory

A Crisis in Making?

“The situation is such that other than government funding, there has been absolutely no

funding available. Early stage VC funding is negligible. Presently, we see no change in the situation”

—Sujay Shetty, associate director PharmaLife Sciences Advisory–Corporate Finance,

PricewaterhouseCoopers



The Wellcome Trust, are each con-tributing `160 crore (£22.5 million).

The Gates Foundation, for instance, has allocated grants to back tubercu-losis (TB) and malaria research in India. The Gates Foundation would invest `4,600 crore ($10 billion) for the development of vaccines within the next 10 years. In addition, the Gates Foundation would support a couple of immunization programs, especially in the developing coun-tries. The funding will target R&D of vaccines in diseases like ma-laria, HIV, AIDS and TB. For this, it has inked partnerships with the UNICEF, WHO, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI alliance) besides a couple of vaccine companies.

The Indian government is setting up some novel schemes for helping companies and entrepreneurs at all stages. Also, Public Private Partner-ship (PPP) model incubators and in-novation centers are coming up, that provide low-cost entry platforms for new companies. i2India, for exam-ple, has started Technovate India, a government-supported innovation center, to help support start-ups, in their early stages. “Early-stage investment companies like ours are still rare. Hence, in addition to work-ing with groups like us, aspiring en-trepreneurs have to invest personal funds, along with government sup-port, to get through the first stage,” concludes Mishra.

Nayantara Som (with inputs from Jahanara Parveen)

and exits are difficult.“Foreign venture funds have had

a couple of very difficult years, given the global economic downturn. Most have typically focused on existing portfolio companies and ensuring their success. Layer onto that, the geographic distance and relatively rich valuations seen in the Indian market, investors have tended to either stay at home or look at China,” points out Dr Patel.

There have been some firms who have made decent investments back in 2007, MPM Capital invested `92crore ($20 million) in Sai Advantium Pharma; and the firm also entered into an agreement with Reliance Life Sciences, under which Reliance Life invested in MPM Capital’s new-est fund, MPM BioVentures IV. The fund reportedly had a total corpus of `2,990 crore ($650 million). Last year, Manipal Acunova, the Banga-lore-based `80 crore ($17.3 million) clinical research firm, had raised `30 crore ($6.5 million) from US-based OrbiMed, a global healthcare-dedicated investment firm, with ap-proximately `23,000 crore ($5 billion) in assets under management. Burill & Co is yet to find a partner.

“We are still looking for the right partner on the ground, in India, for our Burrill India Healthcare Fund. When that fund is up and running, there will be `690-`920 crore ($150-$200 million) that is allocated to In-dia. Not having that fund in place, however, has not impacted us, since we have continued to analyze the in-vestment opportunities that the In-dian life sciences industry offers; and will continue to invest in the region from our global funds,” says Fernan-dez.

Philanthropic InvestmentsA number of trust organizations

and philanthropic institutions like The Wellcome Trust, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have been putting in funds for research innovation and early stage development of products.

Earlier in the year, British Prime Minister David Cameron, an-nounced a `320 crore (£45 million) partner-ship between the UK charity organization, the Wellcome Trust and the Department of Biotechnology in India; to support the

development of new healthcare prod-ucts in India. The agreement builds on the existing Wellcome Trust-DBT Alliance—a five-year `570 crore (£80 million)—initiative that seeks to strengthen Indian biomedical sciences, through a series of fellow-ship programs. Other collaborations announced during the trip include: a `28.4 crore (£4 million) R&D agree-ment between the medical research councils of the two countries. The Department of Biotechnology and

Sector No. of Deals Amount $M

Pharmaceutical 73 1249

Medical Devices 8 31

CRO 18 207

Biotech 22 70

Other 6 20Source: Venture Intelligence

Sector wise break-up of investments made since 2004

Funds and grants provided by the Indian government, mainly through DBT and DST, with philanthropic organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust; have perhaps, been the saving grace for start-up companies

CoverStory

A Crisis in Making?


Bio tech funding in India

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