Taher Abbasi led Cellworks Group raises $10 Million
By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 11 March 2009, 19:30 IST
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Bangalore: Bangalore-based Cellworks Group, which also has an office in California, has raised about $8-10 million from a California private equity (PE) investor, reported mint daily. Details of the funding will be announced in the next few weeks, says its co-founder and chief executive Taher Abbasi. Abbasi, who has been negotiating this deal for some time, agrees that "investors are not issuing new term sheets and new deals are on hold". As the stock market in the U.S. continues to fall, biotech companies have been hit hard - 120 of the 370 public companies in that country have less than six months of cash, according to the U.S. trade body Biotech Industry Organization's 26 February report. In comparison, the Indian biotech industry seems slightly cushioned. "Indian companies have a service model inbuilt in their business - 'learn while you earn'," says Shrikumar Suryanarayan, director general of the industry body Association of Biotech Led Enterprises (ABLE). According to him, the few start-ups that engage in research and development are cross-border entities which use the Indian arm for cost reduction as India continues to be an affordable innovation destination. The true impact of the slowdown on the sector will emerge when the annual industry report is released in June by ABLE and the trade journal BioSpectrum, but experts think that as the money supply gets tighter there's a big opportunity for India.