BioWorld International Correspondent
LONDON - Avesthagen Pvt Ltd. announced the closing of a €25 million (US$32.3 million) private funding round and proclaimed itself the international leader of India's burgeoning biotech sector, as the first company in the country to achieve a valuation more than €100 million.
Investors in the round included Fidelity International, of Luxembourg; Limagrain Group and Daninvest, both of France; and Bennett Coleman of India. At the conclusion of the round, total foreign investment in the Bangalore-based company stands at 31 percent.
The money is earmarked for a pilot scale manufacturing plant for the company's biopharmaceuticals unit and a plant extraction facility for nutraceuticals.
In addition, Avesthagen is looking to buy an Indian seeds company to bolt onto its agricultural biotech business.
Those three arms of Avesthagen are supported by a fourth research and development division, which also provides external R&D services.
The company is in the process of giving the four units operational independence by appointing a chief business officer to head each division. Each will be run as a separate profit center with dedicated management teams.
As it announced the closing of the round, Avesthagen confirmed its intention to become an IPO in 2008, saying that preparations have begun for a flotation in the middle of next year. Legal requirements oblige the company to list first in India, but it will be looking also for an international listing, possibly on Nasdaq, or in Tokyo or London.
The IPO will be timed to coincide with the launch of Avesthagen's first two products from its nutraceutical and biopharmaceutical pipelines. In nutraceuticals, Avesthagen has a partnership with the Swiss food company Nestle Nutrition SA, for the development of plant-based bioactives as food ingredients.
The products are based on traditional Indian plant remedies, and the first product will be for treating metabolic disorder syndrome.
In biopharmaceuticals, Avesthagen has a joint venture with Cipla Ltd., of Mumbai, one of India's leading drug companies. There are 11 biosimilar products in the pipeline currently, and Cipla has an equity investment in Avesthagen.
On the agbiotech side, Avesthagen is partnered with Limagrain SA, of Clermont-Ferrard, France, the world's fourth largest seeds company.
The deal involves setting up a joint venture in India to market existing Limagrain products and those generated through the joint venture.
Other partnerships include one with bioMerieux SA, of Paris, to develop diagnostics for tuberculosis, and with Sequenom Inc., of San Diego, for the validation of gene biomarkers for breast and lung cancer and diabetes.
Excluding the latest round, Avesthagen has raised €10.3 million since it was founded in 1998 by Villoo Morawala-Patell, who completed her PhD at Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg, France.
The company had turnover of €3.7 million in the year to March 2006.