Avestha Gengraine Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Avesthagen) seeks to raise up to Euro 20 million in equity investment as its third round of financing or 'CSeries' financing. The proceeds will be used to generally fund the expansion plans of the company, to set up manufacturing facilities for its product pipelines, and to ramp up sales and marketing apart from strengthening its global presence.
In addition, the company envisages to go in for an Initial Public Offer (IPO) within 18-24 months which would provide financial investors with a suitable exit strategy.
The science and discovery driven life sciences company will also scale up its R&D centre. Right now its two labs are at the Discoverer and Innovator Block, International Tech Park (ITPL), Bangalore.
The company will commence construction of its corporate head quarters and R&D facility on its own two acres of land near ITPL, at an investment of Rs.45 crore. These will include: a pilot scale manufacturing unit for mammalian bio therapeutics as part of the joint venture with Cipla and a pilot scale plant extraction facility for the Food for Medicine programmes with Nestlé and Avestha Nordic.
"The year ahead is challenging for Avesthagen to see its products entering the market," stated Dr. Villoo Morawala-Patell, Founder and CEO, Avesthagen.
Beginning 2003, it has established offices in New Delhi, Hyderabad and Chennai. Overseas business offices are at USA, UK and shortly in Switzerland.
The company has been raising funds from private seed investors. In 2001,Euro 1.8 million was raised as equity investment from ICICI Ventures,Global Trust Bank (Oriental Bank of Commerce) and Tata Industries. In2002-03, a bridge funding round of approx. Euros 1.0 million was raised from ICICI Ventures and OBC as a loan. In 2004, under the second round of equity funding Euro 4.5 million was raised from Godrej Industries, Cipla and bioMereiux. It also raised several grants/soft loan funds between 2003 and 2005 from NMITLI, USAID, SPREAD, amounting to approx. Euro 3.0 million for its R&D programmes.
Its business model which is a combination of Intellectual Property (IP) and product development for long term sustainable revenue generation together with R&D services and collaborative research programs with other parties allows to generate early revenue stream.