Anil
Urs
Bangalore, August 4
Sami
Labs, a Bangalore based nutraceuticals and probiotics company,
has acquired ClinWorld, a clinical research organisation (CRO).
Without disclosing the acquisition cost, Ms Neeraja Shetty,
CEO, nutraceutical formulations division, Sami Labs, said
this marks Sami’s foray into clinical research and trials
for its own products.
ClinWorld is CRO based both in the US and India. Founded by
Dr. Lilly Sanathanan, an industry professional with over 20
years of drug development experience, it has clients like
Ciba-Giegy, Glaxo Wellcome, Glaxo Wellcome Liasion office
(India), and Glaxo SmithKline Biologicals (India).
In
India, its operations mainly involve implementing SAS Programming,
statistical analysis, and data warehousing / mining projects
for Glaxo Wellcome and Glaxo SmithKline.
Sami Labs has drawn up an aggressive plan for its year-old
nutraceutical formulations division to boost sales of its
new nutraceutical formulations like antioxidants, phyto-chemicals,
glucosamine sulphate, and coenzyme supplements.
Backed by the latest technology in research and development
( R&D), the company is today focussed on the discovery
of active compounds from natural sources and commercial production
of new products by applying advanced manufacturing technology.
After focusing on exports for a decade, the company has now
launched a range of preventive and therapeutic products in
the domestic nutraceuticals market, said Ms Shetty . Also,
a separate domestic division has been set up with Rs 5 crore
investment partnering American Formulary, a subsidiary of
the Sami Group.
Currently,
the company has eight nutraceuticals for tackling disease
conditions like prostate cancer, age related macular degeneration,
arthritis, osteoporosis, hepatic dysfunction, and cardiac
diseases.
Globally,
nutraceuticals is a $75- billion business. In India, the size
of the market Rs 150 crore – Rs 200 crore. Sami also
recently launched ‘SelenoCare’, the first organic
selenium supplement, and is planning to launch a probiotic,
a hypocholesterolemic and a couple of other antioxidants in
the market.
The
company is targeting Rs 10-crore sales in the nutraceutical
category by the end of this financial year. For this the company
has partnered with farmers in several parts of the country
to help in value-addition to medicinal plants and an R&D
centre in Karnataka, said Ms Shetty.
The
company has added an indigenously developed supercritical
fluid extraction facility at Nelamangala in Bangalore to eliminate
effluent generation during research.
Sami
Labs is also engaged in tissue culture and phytochemistry
studies, biotech research on probiotics, improved productivity
of existing products in the area of fine chemicals, biochemistry,
and microbiology.