The global venture and growth equity investment firm, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) may fund pharma companies wishing to invest in innovative segments and become a global competitor. At the outset, the company wants to assist the pharma units located in Tamil Nadu, according to Mohan Kumar, executive director of NVP India.

Norwest's interest is to support those companies which are focusing on innovation in medical, pharma and telecom. Among pharma industries, priority will be given for generic drug makers for their innovations. The company has opened an office in Bangalore.

"Those who are involved in the research and development of new medical technologies, new molecular therapies and gene therapies are eligible to get help from our side. We want to help such companies. Let them come to us, we are ready to help, preference will be given for the next generation companies," Mohan Kumar told Pharmabiz.

When asked whether NVP will assist companies which are unable to file DMFs and ANDAs with the US FDA for want of finance, he said his firm will assist only for technology development. But the company will help financially for pharma companies in developing new chemical entity (NCE) and for bio-equivalent study.

To another question, whether the ISM industry in the country can expect any help from their side, he said for the development of technological innovation any company can approach them. So many ISM companies in Tamil Nadu are unable to market their products outside the country due to lack of WHO GMP facilities. For upgrading GMP facilities, NVP will not fund the companies, Mohan Kumar asserted.

To begin with, NVP has given financial assistance of USD 7.2 million to Perfint Healthcare, a Chennai based medical equipment company. Perfint will use the amount to complete the development of its next generation interventional oncology assistance products and further expand the company's presence globally. This is NVP's first healthcare investment in India

The first product of Perfint, PIGA CT, which leverages Robotics and Image Processing to help clinicians to accurately access small and difficult to reach tumours in the lung, liver, pancreas and kidney, in order to detect early stage cancer. According sources from Perfint, PIGA enables radiologists with limited skill to perform complex interventional oncology procedures previously available at only the top hospitals around the globe.

Currently PIGA is being used in major hospitals, teaching institutions and diagnostic centres in India including All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. So far the company has sold 40 units of the product and has assisted more than 800 procedures, said S Nandakumar, CEO of the company. He said the product has got regulatory clearance in India and applied for US FDA clearance.