VCCircle

Exclusive: Sequoia Capital India has invested $12.5 million in Hyderabad based chemistry services company Sai Advantium for 18.34 per cent stake, VC Circle has learned. Set up in 1999, Sai employs about 400 scientists and offers complete chemistry services in support of drug discovery and development. According to the company website, it has capabilities in medicinal chemistry, process chemistry, scale-up, analytical chemistry and manufacturing, which would aid their clients' drug discovery and development needs.
It currently caters to the US and European pharmaceutical industries. The company has two state-of-art R&D facilities in Hyderabad and Pune. According to earlier reports, the Hyderabad-based company was expected to close FY 2007 with revenues of $16 million. The focus of the company is not mass manufacturing, but to be in the value chain of drug discovery programme.
“We don’t want to be a mass manufacturer, but be a part of the drug discovery programme. The extension into modules such as pre-formulations and pre-clinical trials will offer a wide range of drug discovery services to customers,” K. Ranga Raju, chairman and CEO, Sai Advantium, told Businessworld magazine early this year.
Currently, half of its revenues comes from drug discovery services, while the rest comes from process development. Sai Advantium's clients are largely made up of smaller biotech companies.
Sequoia Capital India has a few companies from the healthcare sector in its portfolio such as ReaMetrix (life sciences research), Astra Business and Zavata (healthcare BPO), Dr Lal PathLabs (clinical labs), MarketRx (pharma analytics) and Paras Pharma.