Biopharmaceutical company PlasmaGen Biosciences raised ₹150 crore in a new round of equity financing, valuing the company at over ₹1,500 crore.
ViNS Bioproducts, a specialty biopharma company, picked up a minority equity stake in PlasmaGen and led the round with participation from existing investors and other pharma companies and family offices.
PlasmaGen will use the new funds to take its business international. It has identified distribution partners in “key” export markets.
Back home, the company plans to double down on its presence with its current portfolio of plasma-derived therapeutics. The company’s key products include albumin, intravenous immunoglobulin, rabies immunoglobulin, hepatitis B immunoglobulin and RhD immunoglobulin (anti-D) which it distributes to private hospitals and state hospitals in India.
“This investment further strengthens PlasmaGen’s position as a long-term partner to healthcare systems and patients, both in India and internationally,” Vinod Nahar, founder and executive chairman of PlasmaGen, said in a statement.
The company raised ₹225 crore in 2023 in a round led by the UK’s Artian Investments, with participation from public market investor Ashish Kacholia alongside Eight Roads Ventures’ India team and F-Prime Capital. The funds from the previous round were used to build its manufacturing facility, which started commercial operations last year.
In 2017, the company raised $25 million from Eight Roads Ventures India as well as F-Prime Capital Partners in their first external round of funding, according to Entrackr. With the latest round, PlasmaGen has raised ₹600 crore in overall funding since its inception in 2010.
Companies such as PlasmaGen have become increasingly popular in the past 24 months as both pharmaceutical giants and investor appetite for vertical therapeutics has gone up. It’s not just at the late stage where interest has gone up, either.
Changing preferences
Venture capital has grown tired of backing general healthcare companies and now prefers niche solutions. Half of the top 10 venture capital investments in healthcare startups since 2020 were in PharmEasy, an online marketplace for medicines and diagnostics services, data from Venture Intelligence show. But in the previous 18 months, VC investments have also flowed into companies such as Innovaccer, Neuberg Diagnostics, and Qure.ai.
The rationale is that although the addressable market size might be small, impact and value-creation are high, especially for IP-led companies. While these companies tend to start small, large pharmaceutical companies often look to them as potential merger and acquisition candidates to build out their own product lines, giving investors healthy exits.
