The Venture Intelligence Blog

A Mint article titled  FDI in pharma to boost mergers, PE investments, say experts ,  quotes Venture Intelligence data on transactions in Private Equity and M&A in the Pharma space. Click here to read more. Venture Intelligence is India's longest serving provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India.  Click Here to Sign Up for the FREE Weekly Edition of the Deal Digest: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

A Business Standard article by Ranju Sarkar uses Venture Intelligence exit data, to analyse exits in Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals sector. Recent Healthcare IPOs have also delivered good returns for PE/VC investors, Catch our analysis of these companies through the links below: Thyrocare Technologies IPO Healthcare Global IPO Dr. Lal Pathlabs IPO Venture Intelligence is India's longest serving provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India.  Click Here to Sign Up for the FREE Weekly Edition of the Deal Digest: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

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Trends from the Transactions Universe There have been at least eight M&A transactions involving pure play Contract Research Organization firms between January 2014 and May 2015 - versus just five deals in the entire three year period prior to 2014. Of these transactions, four have been domestic deals and three Inbound. The only Outbound transaction was GVK Biosciences' acquisition of US-based Aragen Bioscience which specializes in high-value biologics services. The Sequoia Capital India-backed GVK Bio was also a buyer domestically - acquiring Chennai-based Vanta Bioscience which offers toxicology evaluation services for the pharmaceutical, biotech, food supplements and feed additives industries. (GVK also excercised its call option to buy out Dai-Ichi Karkaria's entire stake in their joint venture Inogent which offers a mix of services  - Process R&D and Custom Chemical Synthesis & Manufacturing - and Products - APIs and Intermediates.) While GVK has been a b...

In February 2013, the publicly listed Strides sold its injectable medicine business, Agila Specialties, to US drug giant Mylan Inc. From the Business Today profile: Son of a government official, Kumar hails from Kerala and grew up in Ooty. He was just 21 years old when he set out for Mumbai in 1982 to seek his destiny. In his initial days, he worked with the Bombay Drug House and British Pharmaceutical Laboratories. He set up Strides at Vashi, Navi Mumbai, in 1990. ...the sale, at more than $1.6 billion (about Rs 9,000 crore), is one of the biggest deals in the Indian pharmaceutical sector in recent times. Strides will get an additional $250 million if it meets certain undisclosed conditions. ...Analysts say injectables, the business Strides is selling, is an interesting segment, partly because making injections is more difficult than making tablets. Plus, this is a product more targeted at hospitals than individuals. This means that there are fewer players in the market. The upsid...

Edited excerpts from the Press Release: Franklin Templeton Private Equity Strategy, a private equity portfolio advised by Darby Asia Investors (India) Limited, has invested Rs 45 crore in Symbiotec Pharmalab Limited. Symbiotec is engaged in research, development, manufacturing and marketing of research based Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (“API”s) for corticosteroids and hormones. It has an extensive product portfolio of over 40 corticosteroids and hormones APIs and supplies its products to leading pharmaceutical companies in India and overseas including marquee names such GSK Pharmaceuticals, Teva, Ranbaxy and Cipla. The funds raised from FTPES will be applied towards backward integration by setting up fermentation facilities which is expected to improve the Company’s competitive positioning and profitability. This also is expected to help the Company to attract customers from highly regulated markets such as US, Europe and Japan. Systematix Capital Services Pvt. Ltd was the exclu...

From the Business Today article : "The consumer healthcare segment is growing at around 18 per cent, almost 1.5 times the rate at which the FMCG sector is growing," points out Nikhil Vora, Managing Director at brokerage house IDFCSSKI. Rising fees of medical professionals, an increasing penchant for self-medication, aggressive advertising and increasing faith in traditional medicinal systems like ayurveda are driving this growth. ..."Companies like Amrutanjan, Zandu and Paras are in demand because they have established brands and a wide product portfolio," says Vora. At eight times its sales, Paras may have been valued richly, but analysts say it has commanded such a price because there are not too many opportunities for inorganic growth in this lucrative segment. ...A major attraction of OTC pharma is the margins, which are almost double those in FMCG. "On an average, the operating margins in OTC pharma could vary between 20 and 25 per cent compared to 12 to 1...

Following the buyout of India's largest pharma firm Ranbaxy by Japan's Daiichi and RFCL's animal healthcare business by Pfizer, Businessworld has a cover story on how and why the big MNC pharma firms are now taking the Indian market more seriously. In recent months, two other large western pharma companies — UK’s GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and France’s Sanofi-Aventis — have made news with their acquisition plans. Others such as US’s Merck & Co., are exploring differential drug pricing, and government partnerships to tap market potential. Still others — such as Novartis India, the local arm of the Swiss drug giant — are pushing into rural markets. ..a drier blockbuster pipeline has led MNCs to place a global thrust on generics. India is one of the few remaining generics markets driven by doctor prescriptions and not just trade-push. In the US, prices collapse when a drug loses patent protection. But in India, a market leader commands a sustainable ‘brand’ premium, without an...