First, to the credit of the investors of
Connexios (Nadathur Holdings and Investments), they invested in an idea and
held on to it for a decade or so knowing well the pitfalls of such a ‘high risk
high gain’ business model and at a time when such type of investments were unheard
of in India . In India, unlike the West, we do not see many University spin
offs working to bring breakthrough concepts/technology from the ‘bench to the
bedside’ so in that aspect Connexios Life Sciences took a bold step to focus on
System/Network biology approach to find novel targets and newer ‘first in class’
molecules. Another aspect that is interesting in this is that the company focused
all its energies and expertise on type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Drug
discovery is a costly and long drawn affair so focusing on one disease model
was a good decision which led to concentrated efforts by the team. This also
means that the company has more than one option in terms of novel targets and
new small molecules to focus on the disease. So if one program fails, there
would be a back up of other targets and small molecule entities (SMEs) giving
credibility to the company.
The success of Connexios therefore
gives a huge fillip to the ‘research based’ organizations. In India, very few
companies focus on impactful research especially in the life science/biotech
arena. As India is known as ‘the pharmacy of the world’, hence, most of the
pharma companies devote their research activities on the development of
generics (formulation, synthesis etc.) with very little emphasis on discovery
of newer molecules or targets. This leaves a huge gap in the Indian innovation
ecosystem. The news of the collaboration between Connexios and BI should also
provide impetus to investors to believe in this type of Business model with
more conviction than before.
There is no denying fact, that India
can become a major Innovation hub as it has a huge ‘talent’ pool of high
skilled scientists who work at a fraction of cost as compared to the their
western counterparts. The time has come to give more credit to our scientists and
a better conducive research atmosphere with more investments in this sector so
that we have more successful Connexios type stories in the future!
