Organization: Metahelix Life Sciences Ltd
MD: Dr KK Narayanan
Bioscience Revenue: Rs 310 crore

Bangalore-based Metahelix Life Sciences' turnover for the financial year 2014-15 was Rs 309.99 crore, an almost 38 percent up from the figure of Rs 224.81 crore in the fiscal 2013-14. Domestic sales contributes majority of its business,around Rs 308.76 crore and the export contribution is quite miniscule, Rs 0.86 crore. In the present fiscal year, the company is targeting a growth of 34 percent.

Metahelix, started by Dr K K Narayanan along with four other scientists in the year 2001. Metahelix is an agri-biotech company focused on developing traits and technologies for crop protection and improved productivity.

The firm leverages its expertize in crop genetics and plant biotechnology to develop high performance hybrid seeds in rice, maize, cotton and millets for Indian markets with transgenic traits for insect, viral and fungal protection traits. Hybrid seeds and traits are commercialized by its wholly owned subsidiary seeds business, Dhaanya Seeds.

Metahelix has its main biotechnology research laboratories in Bangalore and crop breeding stations at Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Attur (Salem Dt). The Hyderabad research station focuses on rice and cotton. The Ahmedabad and Aurangabad research stations focus on pearl millet and cotton and is also a key trialing station for all the other crops.

The transgenic traits being developed by the company include Bt cotton (Bollworm and Spodoptera tolerance), Bt rice (Yellow Stem Borer tolerance). In addition, it is working on developing new and novel RNAi technologies for virus and fungal tolerance traits in rice, maize and vegetable crops. The company also provides customized research to select global agri-biotech business using its proprietary technologies in crop transformation and functional genomics. Metahelix aims to be a leading provider of seed and technology traits to farmers in India and other relevant markets of Asia and across globe.

Metahelix has three distinct functional groups that work in tandem to meet the overall organizational goals, Crop Breeding, Trait Development and Regulatory Sciences. Its core crops among the field crops are Rice, Maize, Cotton and Millets and among the vegetable crops are tomato, hot-pepper and okra where it has strong programs in crop breeding and trait development.

In the year 2010, Rallis India (Rallis), a subsidiary of Tata Chemicals had acquired the majority stake, about 53.5 percent in the company for about Rs 99.5 crore.