Avesthagen aims to access India's biodiversity

By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 08 October 2003, 19:30 IST
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BANGALORE: Avesthagen, the Bangalore-based agribiotech and bioinformatics company, by setting up a wholly-owned subsidiary — Avgen — in the US, plans to tap the global capital and operational structure for its products and services. “This global structure when ready will take advantage of India’s low cost-structure and availability of high-skilled globally trained scientists for research,” said Dr Villoo Morawala Patell, the founder & CEO of Avesthagen. The subsidiary, which came into existence recently, is currently based at San Diego and will be headed by Mr Victor Moreno. “The subsidiary will actively accesses India’s unique biodiversity while maintaining the ability to raise capital and market its products in more mature markets,” said Dr Patell. The company has plans to bring to market over the next few years a range of branded products based on clinically validated nutritional compounds and is actively looking at promoting ayurveda products from Kerala in the field of diabetes, obesity and osteoporosis. (Can biotech be the next boom sector?) The company has also come out with another Indian subsidiary — Avesthagen Quality Agriculture Services (AQUAS). “AQUAS is a joint venture between us and Icrisat, Hyderabad. This has been established mainly for the purpose of food, water and seed purity testing in our labs located in Icrisat premises,” said Dr Patell. By creating subsidiaries, Avesthagen plans to offer integrated biotech research and development services to large biotech, pharma and agro companies globally and in India. The company has also chalked out a plan to address global functional food market in the form of ‘food for medicine’ and ‘seed for food’. According to her, the company was addressing the functional food market derived from the Indian medicinal plants and traditional foods. Under the ‘food for medicine’, programme, a major thrust is to derive novel molecule and therapeutics from standardised plant extracts and prepare new cocktails for specific disease like diabetics and skin care. For ‘seed for food’ category, the company is to come out with draught tolerant plants and derive protein of antioxidant addressing diabetics through rice. “Through these new initiatives, the company plans to achieve $2.6 million revenues in the first year and by 5 years $5.2 million through skin care and from diabetes $2.3 million,” she said. Global functional food market is valued at $52 billion of which 26% sales comes from Asia, 34% western Europe, 38% North America with the rest of the world constituting 2%. (Source: Economic Times)