| Varaprasad Reddy, managing director, said, "We are in negotiations with a few investors who will not only provide funding but will contribute towards technology and marketing as well. We have not yet closed in on any deal." |
| Reddy said the amount of funds to be raised and equity to be offloaded would depend on the type of investor. |
| "If the investor can contribute significantly towards our company, we would not mind offloading even 50 per cent stake," he added. |
| In the initial years of operation, the company had received some investment from H E Yusuf Bin Alawi Abdullah, foreign minister of Sultanate of Oman. |
| He had invested money in his personal capacity and had also arranged for long term loans from Oman International Bank at low interest rates. |
| Meanwhile, Shantha Biotechnics is eyeing a turnover of around Rs 130 crore this year, of which approximately Rs 20 crore would come from contract development and manufacturing. |
| "We already have orders worth around Rs 5 crore in this area and see it emerging as a good opportunity for us. In the future, we could even get 50 per cent of our revenues from this stream," Reddy said. |
| Shantha Biotechnics will be coming out with new products like DTP+ Hep B+ Hib pentavalent vaccine and a tissue plasminogen activator, which is basically a medication used to dissolve blood clots, by the year-end. Also on the cards are vaccines for rubella, mumps, rotavirus, cholera and typhoid. |
| Shantha Biotechnics also has a technical collaboration with city-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, wherein the focus is on evolving an expression system which will typically help in developing more products. "It will basically be a launchpad for products," Reddy said. |
| The company invests approximately 25 per cent of its revenues on research and development. |
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