Avesthagen

Business: Research in biotechnology, nutrition and healthcare

Biotech Revenue: Rs 16 crore

CEO: Dr Villoo Morawala-Patell (Vice Chairperson and MD)

Start-up Year: 1988

Address: "Discoverer", 9th Floor, International Tech Park, Whitefield Road, Bangalore - 560 066

Tel.: 91-80-2841 1877

Fax: 91-80-2841 8780

Website: www.avesthagen.com

Avesthagen, founded in 1998, is a science and discovery based life sciences company that focuses on achieving convergence between food, pharma and population genetics leading to preventive personalized medicine. To this end the company develops, both in-house and/or in partnering mode, medicinal plant based bioactive nutraceuticals for degenerative conditions ("Food for Medicine" program), such as diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis and CVD, biopharmaceuticals, DNA based diagnostic products allowing for future personalized therapies (e.g. tuberculosis), and novel, value-added seed hybrids combining abiotic stress tolerance with enhanced nutritional value ("Seed for Food" program). Avesthagen also uses its technology platform and capabilities to provide innovative R&D services to the global pharma, biotech, food and seed industries ("RPO – Research Process Outsourcing"
program).

Avesthagen is about to start construction of its new facilities, which will include additional facilities such as cGMP facilities for pilot and commercial scale manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals, P3 labs for research on emerging pathogens, pilot scale plant extraction facilities as well as facilities for animal trials.

It recently launched Avestagenome, a unique project to build a complete genetic, genealogical and medical database of the Parsis. This Rs 125-crore project is expected to be completed within five years.