Funding the Indian Life Science start-ups – a perspective

The new ‘start-up’ culture developing in India is a good sign. Investors are getting more interested in this space; however, the investors also need to look beyond the e-commerce space. Many life science based organizations can be a good bet for middle to long run outlook. Life science offers a big arena to potential investors. From drug discovery companies to Bioinformatics organizations looking to disruptive technologies to cater to the ever increasing healthcare needs.  Although life science domain requires a considerably longer gestation period yet there are companies or technologies that can give a quicker return on investment. Investment from a well meaning ‘patient’ investor(s) can be a force multiplier. The idea of an ‘ideal’ investor is not very difficult to fathom. Good investment can really turn around a company faster as compared to, let’ say, if the start-up wanted to scale up through only internal accruals. 

Life Science organizations require highly skilled manpower. The technology used is ever evolving hence there is a big scope for right investment in the right organizations. The chance of ‘fly-by night’ operators in this domain is slim or negligible. With newer breakthroughs in hardware and better understanding of the human genome, smarter drugs, accurate diagnosis-prognosis are all in the realm of reality. Personalized/Precision medicine is the new buzz word which includes not only advances in medicine but also diagnostics, bio-IT, genomics, proteomics etc. Start-up organizations working in all the above mentioned mini-domains ultimately would cater to the ocean of better healthcare. Therefore the success of many of these organizations would depend on how the investor community looks at this space and helps it grow more thereby not only creating jobs but also giving India  the ‘knowledge-edge’ that many of the intellectuals talk about as our strength.

I believe that the start-up revolution in the bioscience space in India has not even started but if nurtured well it has the potential to turn around and give India its next ‘Life Science Google/Alphabet’

Are you only worth your last drawn salary?

What is talent? How do you judge it? Shouldn’t qualification, experience, useful contribution in the past etc. be the yardstick to measure potential in an individual? There is also something called as an ‘inherent’ potential which might not come across directly in the CVs but to a trained talent hunter it becomes pretty apparent, if not in the CV, then surely during the interview! But many a times when one approaches a new job the one thing that is commonly asked is about the person’s last drawn salary. And unfortunately, on this basis, an individual’s pay is decided in the next organization.

Consider this; a salary drawn can be dependent on factors such as the company one works for (start-up or an established company), the role entrusted in previous organization etc. Some companies offer better non-salary perks and higher bonuses, ESOPs etc. which might have a bearing on one’s final payslip. Secondly, in today’s uncertain job market, many people take a plunge and work for start-ups and in many cases sacrifice salary in the expectation that the start-up would one day bloom but as we know many of these companies do not see the end of the day and then the person sometimes become ‘persona non grata’  in the job market.  In today’s uncertain job scenario, people learn, unlearn and relearn various tricks of the trade to become relevant. They take risks and also fail or become unemployed. Should an individual who is unemployed for a while because of volatile job market or the risks that he or she might have taken, make him vulnerable to lesser pay in future organizations? 

Salary should commensurate with knowledge, experience, ability and the sincerity of purpose and not by a dip in one’s career due to the above mentioned points. Good companies do not compromise on talent and give due worth and recognition because as they say ‘You don't build a business --you build people-- and then people build the business”.  

Jobs in the Life science Industry in India – It is a mirage

India is a country where academic excellence is given a priority from the very childhood. Parents encourage children sometimes even going to the extent of coaxing them to leave other activities and focus on ‘studies’ to get into good colleges and get a good degree (read engineering/medicine). People who follow their passion for science then go on to complete higher education degrees (PhD, PostDoc) in the hope that their ‘youth’ spent in the labs would guarantee them good job opportunity in the future. However, that is not the case now as many genuinely talented, knowledgeable and deserving candidates are running helter skelter to cling on to whatever comes their way thereby even sacrificing or ‘adapting’ to the newer ‘job’ requirements. 

Consider this, an engineering graduate gets into a job in the fertile age of around 22-23, whereas a Life science PhD holder gets into an active meaningful job only after the age of 30 and thereafter the real struggle begins. Although, the Indian Life science industry has evolved off late but in reality they have not helped the life science job seekers. There are very few Government sponsored jobs and mostly the industry caters to the demand. There was once a time when Biotechnology used to be compared with the Information technology in terms of the revenue generation scope and job creation. Alas, the biotechnology sector has fallen way back. It would be futile to expect all research driven opportunities coming their way for the PhDs but the ancillary positions which require scientific acumen should be promoted. Many PhDs have good communication and have good business skills, they should be considered for positions that require such skills rather than only looking for people with MBAs. 

There is a case for the Human resource (HR) departments to also gear up with these eventualities. Many a times HR people are not trained to look for talent but they only go with matching the key words required for the job with the candidate’s CV! This is a narrow way to approach the talent hunt and in my opinion this needs to be overhauled. 

We would need to find out solution to this mess otherwise not many people will take up science or pursue research in the future.

A shot in the arm for the Indian Drug discovery/Innovation ecosystem

The recent announcement of collaboration in the field of type 2 diabetes between Boehringer Ingelheim and Connexios LifeSciences, a Bangalore based drug discovery company is good news for the entire Indian ‘innovation’ ecosystem especially in the field of life sciences.

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!