Piramal Healthcare Ltd, which sold its pharmaceutical formulations business for Rs. 17,000 crore to the US drug maker Abbott Laboratories in 2010, is on the prowl to build its pharma business again.
The company has set up a mergers and acquisitions (M&A) team to buy pharma companies, led by chief operating officer Vijay Shah, considered a business turn-around expert and a confidant of chairman Ajay Piramal.
The M&A team is already in talks with some contract manufacturing companies in Europe and the US for possible acquisitions, Shah said, without disclosing more details.
“Contract manufacturing and services is a widely fragmented segment in the pharma industry at present and there is enough scope for consolidation,” Shah said in an interview last week.
Contract research and manufacturing services, or Crams, was one of the three businesses Piramal Healthcare retained when it sold its domestic drug formulations and diagnostic services arms to Abbott and Super Religare Laboratories respectively.
The company has set up a mergers and acquisitions (M&A) team to buy pharma companies, led by chief operating officer Vijay Shah, considered a business turn-around expert and a confidant of chairman Ajay Piramal.
The M&A team is already in talks with some contract manufacturing companies in Europe and the US for possible acquisitions, Shah said, without disclosing more details.
“Contract manufacturing and services is a widely fragmented segment in the pharma industry at present and there is enough scope for consolidation,” Shah said in an interview last week.
Contract research and manufacturing services, or Crams, was one of the three businesses Piramal Healthcare retained when it sold its domestic drug formulations and diagnostic services arms to Abbott and Super Religare Laboratories respectively.
The other two businesses Piramal retained were the smaller over-the-counter and the critical-care products segments, which it wants to scale up using the money it got from the divestment.
“We want to scale up this business (custom manufacturing) to make it to the top five in the world. It will be through acquisitions and organic growth. In fact, we had looked at couple of companies in India for acquisition but the deals didn’t work out due to high valuation,” Shah said.