How has Veeda grown since GBR last spoke with you in 2019?

In addition to maintaining our focus on increasing our capabilities surrounding healthy volunteer studies for generics, Veeda has focused on building capabilities in clinical trials, investing in biosimilars, supporting clinical development of novel drugs and adding preclinical capabilities. Since 2019, we have become a significantly broader based integrated service provider.

On the infrastructure side for healthy volunteers, we added an additional 162 beds to now have 588 bed capacity as well as added an 18-bed phase 1 clinic for doing first in human (single ascending dose studies and multiple ascending dose studies) and phase 1 studies. In clinical trials too, we have grown substantially over the past three years, with our team expanding from around 20 people to over 80. We added preclinical capabilities to our group portfolio by investing in Bioneeds India, a leading preclinical CRO based in Bangalore. We also entered into a joint venture with Canadian based Somru BioScience to establish Ingenuity Biosciences, for fast tracking our growth in biosimilars.

Collectively across Ingenuity, Somru and Bioneeds, we now offer end-to-end modular technical services, encompassing both pre-clinical and clinical development of biosimilars addressing global regulatory requirements.

What led your company to amplify its focus on complex generics?

Veeda continues to focus on servicing the generics industry with healthy volunteer as well as clinical trials. Over the years, the company has developed deep domain capabilities across diverse dosage forms, routes of administration and complexities, including injectables, inhalation studies, dermatology, oral solid tablets and capsules. As our clients, both in India and globally, are increasingly moving onwards from simple generics towards complex generics, our focus has been to transition alongside them through offering the clinical development support they need. Our investments into the preclinical space have proven helpful for our clients as they come to us for services such as additional toxicity tests or impurity qualification work for the development of novel generics before initiating clinical studies.

Why do you believe CROs are particularly important in the life sciences today?

More work in the life sciences is being done by small and emerging biopharma companies, and this plays in favor of integrated, wider-based platforms like Veeda. We continue to focus on this segment of clients because we see an opportunity to bring in full-service capabilities even though functional service engagement with big pharma also remains an important part of our business.

What steps are critical to propel the industry forward in terms of innovation?

The Indian government has placed a concerted effort on building capacity within the industry and supporting innovation. India’s biopharma sector remains relatively constrained when it comes to access to risk capital, but there is significant potential. The emergence of venture capital available for innovative biopharma companies to develop their programs has increased substantially over the past decade in India. There are also a lot of incubation centers that have come up in universities and outside, especially in places like Pune and Hyderabad, and this is very encouraging to see.

The government is also working on building industry capacity to support innovation, such as phase 1 clinical pharmacology, analytical and bioanalytical facilities. There are discussions currently underway regarding how to build this infrastructure, in collaboration between the government, academia and industry, to create the right ecosystem. Overall, I believe these cross-industry collaborations to build the right ecosystem for innovation, along with the push for risk capital, are driving the industry forward. If this all gets into rhythm, I see the industry in a very different place five years from now.

To conclude, can you share your main goal for Veeda for the coming years?

Veeda is transitioning from being a clinical research organization into a broad based and integrated contract research organization. We see significant growth for preclinical and clinical research services in India over the medium to long term. With our comprehensive portfolio of drug development services and our continuing investment in infrastructure, people and process to build new capabilities relevant to our clients, we believe that we are very well positioned to be preferred partners for global small and emerging biotech companies for their novel drug development programs.