In a way, Rashmi Barbhaiya has pharmaceuticals in his blood. His physician father, Harshad Barbhaiya, worked for the Sarabhais. After studying at the University of London and University of Florida, Barbhaiya joined Bristol Myers Squibb as a senior research scientist and went on to become vice-president (metabolism and pharmacokinetics). When he left in 2001, he had a budget of $30 million and led a team of 180 scientists. He then set up his own consultancy outfit called Dynametics Consulting. In 2002, he was picked up by Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd, India’s largest pharmaceutical company by sales, as its head of research and development.
Two years later, he left Ranbaxy and along with Kasim Mookhtiar (another old Bristol Myers Squibb scientist who spearheaded the new drug discovery research team of 200 at Ranbaxy) and Sanjiv Kaul (in charge of global licensing) set up Advinus — derived from advantage, India and USA. Soon, the Tata Group invested in the new company, which was a big leap of faith for the trio. R Gopalakrishnan is the chairman of the company and its board includes Homi Khusrokhan and Kishor Chaukar.
After leaving Ranbaxy, the easiest option for me was to return to the US where my kids live and where I still maintain home. However, I decided to stay on in India to create something novel and to contribute to India’s emerging knowledge-based industry in general and pharmaceutical innovation in particular.
I was convinced that I needed to create an innovation-driven company which does not have a baggage of generic drugs or manufacturing successes. In my view, one requires a very different mindset to succeed in generics vis-à-vis a high-risk, long-gestation, innovation-driven business. Innovation requires a management team that has long-term vision and understanding to accept failures and patience.
On my departure from Ranbaxy, Kasimbhai (Kasim Mookhtiar) and Sanjiv Kaul were the first to come and meet me. Kasimbhai mentioned to me that he had not returned to India to join Ranbaxy. He came back because he and I made a great team and he wanted to leverage our synergies. Kaul made it very clear that I must not return to the US after two years of hard work at Ranbaxy. And this is how the seeds of Advinus were sown.
Kasimbhai, Kaul and I were all set to secure funding from venture capital and private equity funds when Homi Khusrokhan approached me about Tata’s interest in the life science area.
Having the Tata Group on board helped in a big way. Three entrepreneurs got support from one of the most ethical and successful industrial houses of the country. It provided further validation of our conviction and business model. We automatically got a number of seasoned business professionals, particularly our board members, to support the venture. To the outside world and to our alliance partners, the association with the Tata Group provided a sense of financial stability for a startup company. It helped us with recruitment, negotiation with financial institutions and for attracting prestigious alliances at a very early stage of the company.
Breaking the cost barrier
Advinus has set out to become the most respected and successful innovation-driven pharmaceutical company from India. The company was formed to address one fundamental issue for the pharmaceutical industry — the $1 billion cost to convert a molecule into medicine. Such high cost and decreasing R&D productivity may not be sustainable. We have set out to provide a solution to this fundamental problem.
If the indication of the molecule requires large multi-centre outcome trials, it may not be possible to save too much money. However, for a disease like malaria where the duration of the treatment is short, it may be possible to develop a molecule for under $75 million.
We are not involved in generic drugs, manufacturing API (bulk drugs) and sales and marketing. We aim to discover and develop new therapies to serve unmet clinical needs. We are also committed to discover and develop new, safer, effective and cost-effective drugs for a variety of neglected diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and so on to serve the needs of India and other developing countries. We leverage our vast R&D experience and India’s cost advantage and feel very proud to have emerged as one of the key R&D players in the field of neglected diseases.
We are building a rich pipeline of novel molecules intended for the treatment of metabolic and inflammatory diseases. We intend to build value for Advinus by discovering and developing proprietary products. While we are building value for the company from our own intellectual property, we are generating revenues through drug development services. We believe we have built a unique drug development centre that has bandwidth, capabilities and experience to support pre- and early-clinical development of new molecules.
We have invested over Rs 100 crore to build an infrastructure of over 300,000 sq ft in Pune and Bangalore with 470 highly qualified individuals — the infrastructure will allow us to continue to grow for the next few years.
Our team was instrumental in bringing GlaxoSmithKline to India when the alliance with Ranbaxy was announced. This was the first time a multinational company entered India for drug discovery. We have continued this tradition at Advinus as well. Our drug discovery facility in Pune was inaugurated by Ratan Tata in August 2006 and in November that year we announced our first risk-reward sharing alliance with Merck. This was followed with a couple of more such alliances — Johnson & Johnson companies, Genzyme and so on. Our team takes pride in being the first partner for pharmaceutical R&D in India for a number of highly successful companies.
Our clients have filed for Investigational New Drugs (INDs) in the US and Canada based on studies conducted in the Bangalore facility. We intend to file for a few INDs of our own molecules in the next few months. Here we focus on metabolic diseases and inflammation. In addition, we have programmes on congestive heart disease and Parkinson’s diseases. Through our partners we also work on novel targets which have not been validated in humans.
Drug discovery efforts
In terms of the work we do, Advinus has two business units. One focuses on drug discovery and is based in Pune. The other business unit is based in Bangalore and provides services to global pharmaceutical, biotech and agro-chemical companies for developing their products. Our drug discovery team focuses on discovering new medicines for the treatment of diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, asthma and a variety of neglected diseases. We are also currently expanding the scope of our drug discovery efforts into new areas.
In Bangalore, we offer services for process chemistry, analytical chemistry, pre-formulation, stability testing, residue analysis, drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics, bio-analytical, safety pharmacology, toxicology and early clinical trials (we work with a clinical research organisation for this). Our clients are agro-chemical, biotech and pharmaceutical companies from around the world.
For the last four years, we have put our energy to build a robust organisation with a state-of-the-art infrastructure and outstanding professionals. We are gradually shifting our focus to grow the company. A number of initiatives are being considered for organic and inorganic growth of the company. We have also identified a number of gap areas to fill. We also want to address public health issues of the country. In addition, we are exploring a variety of options to train future pharmaceutical scientists in India.
We have state-of-the-art safety evaluation capabilities. In addition, Advinus is the only company in India that has bandwidth and capabilities to develop IND packages for starting Phase I trials for new drug candidates. Unlike the large US-based contract research organisations, our senior team does not come from a service background. Our team members come from a large pharmaceutical background where they have discovered and developed new drugs. We provide a lot more than just services. In addition, we have developed a unique model to discover new medicines for neglected diseases with the objective to make safe, effective and affordable new drugs available to the poorest of the poor.
