But Gill felt something was amiss. He did not care about his products —something that became increasingly obvious to him as he managed Kodak’s Unix business. “There are a zillion versions of Unix,” Gill says. “It was like, why does the world need another form of Unix? I could never understand it.”
And so began a search for something more meaningful. He found the answer at Inhale Therapeutics, which he joined in 1992 as CFO, before becoming CEO in 2000. He had worked as a consultant with investors who had provided the seed capital for Inhale; and he knew the company Chairman, Rob Chess, who was in the process of joining the company as its first CEO.
Inhale is a pulmonary delivery company, which uses technology to find alternative ways to deliver existing drugs. Through one technology the company is developing, diabetics will be able to inhale an insulin drug instead of being injected with it. The technology will potentially change drug delivery forever.
Notwithstanding its tremendous potential, the biotech industry is still in a rapid growth stage, even though it has been around for more than 20 years. This means challenges, but also myriad different professional opportunities. Indian engineers who come to the United States usually get involved in the more entrenched high-tech sector. But Gill says Indian engineers are eminently suited to biotech. Inhale has a number of Indian scientists among its 700 full-time employees, and he believes that as Indian pharmaceutical companies become more successful, Indian engineers — especially those with degrees in chemical engineering — will start to look toward the U.S. biotech industry.
Gill is less directly involved in Inhale’s technological development work as he is with the day-to-day management of the company. The 1990s proved to be very unfavorable for the biotech industry, and as the boom cycle early in the decade petered out, cash management became key. In those troubled times, Inhale demonstrated great fiscal discipline. By the time the company went public in 1994, it had raised $10.7 million in venture capital, but had saved $5 million of that capital.
“Too many companies try to conserve cash after they have spent it when there is relatively little left,” Gill says.
Wall Street has also proved to be a challenging place for some biotech firms, many of which don’t have real products when they go public and must report performance on the basis of scientific breakthroughs.
But Gill’s management of Inhale extends beyond the scope of finances and investors. Witness the Inhale “shuffle,” a unique management style that he and other senior executives developed. Gill smiles when he says that the “shuffle” has become part of company folklore. Once a year, employees are physically moved around the office. It began because new space was made available as the building was undergoing construction. But now it is done with the aim of making different departments work with one another. Even Gill, as CEO, shares his office with other Inhale employees.
“In many companies, the developers won’t go where the sales department is sitting, and will say, ‘Those are the sales guys,’” he says. “They start to categorize and become islands—and we said that we wouldn’t allow that.”
While the management strategy of the company is unique, Inhale has followed corporate America’s lead in undertaking strategic acquisitions. Gill felt it was necessary to expand Inhale’s product portfolio to include drugs that are either orally ingested or injected, and find alternative ways of delivering them. With this aim, the company acquired Bradford Particle Design based in Bradford, U.K., and Shearwater based in Huntsville, Ala. Shearwater, acquired for $191 million in 2001, is a molecular engineering company that uses a technology known as “PEGylation.” It alters the characteristics of a drug, such that patients can be injected with it less frequently and suffer fewer side effects. Roche, one of Inhale’s pharmaceutical partners, is using the technology on a Hepatitis C drug that it produces.
Gill explains the reason for Inhale’s shift in focus from being a purely pulmonary delivery company.
“If you are giving injections three or four times a day, then there is a greater need to find a non-injectable solution. But with PEGylation, this need is lessened,” he says. “We viewed this as competition, and so we ended up acquiring Shearwater, which we thought clearly had the best technology in that space.”
Inhale had cultivated a relationship with Bradford Particle Design since 1994. It was using a supercritical fluid to consistently produce high-quality, pure drug substances with well defined and well-controlled particle characteristics suitable for use in inhaleable, oral or injectable drug formulations. Bradford was acquired in 2000 for $200 million. Using these combined technologies, Inhale is working on a wide range of drugs, including those that treat cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and osteoporosis.
What ultimately drives Inhale employees and its CEO is the public’s response to their efforts. Gill remembers meeting the parents of a girl with multiple sclerosis at a social function, and they knew that Inhale was working on a drug to treat it. The father immediately offered his help; and from then on, every time their paths cross, he offers to assist Inhale in any way possible. Patients also occasionally visit Inhale’s facility at San Carlos, Calif. and provide feedback.
“Our products make a difference in the quality of people’s lives. And when you see the patient satisfaction data on some of our clinical trials, the feeling is fabulous,” Gill says. “When you talk to patients, you realize this work is worth it.”
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