Credit and finance for MSMEs: Principal financial institution for MSMEs SIDBI has invested Rs 30 crore in the Series A equity funding round of biotech company OmniBRx Biotechnologies through its MSME-focused venture capital arm SIDBI Venture Capital. Incorporated in 2016, OmniBRx makes single-use bioreactors called CellBRx for developing vaccines, stem cells, gene therapies, etc. The company said CellBRx is the world’s largest and most efficient vaccine manufacturing platform for large-scale vaccines and viral vector (a kind of virus used in cancer therapy) production.
“Scalable and efficient bioprocessing technologies, specifically the single-use bioreactor platforms are in high demand worldwide for the production of vaccines and other biologicals. Innovation-based technology solutions from OmniBRx has the potential to meet these exponentially growing market demands of biologics and vaccines,” said Ravindra Patel, founder and CEO of OmniBRx Biotechnologies in a statement.
The company said it will expand business in the overseas market with the latest infusion of funds and will also invest in adding to its capacity to build manufacturing facilities to augment its production capabilities and meet growing market demands.
“Their focus and deep domain knowledge will help them to penetrate the global markets. This is our third investment out of “Ubharte Sitaare Fund” focused on MSMEs scaling up in the export markets,” said Sajit Kumar, Senior VP, SIDBI Venture Capital Limited.
Covalensedigital (cloud-based subscription monetization, billing and revenue management solutions provider) and Serosoft (educational ERP software provider) are the other two enterprises that raised capital from Ubharte Sitaare Fund in August 2022 and October 2022 respectively. The fund was registered in July 2021 and co-sponsored by SIDBI and Export Import Bank of India
Meanwhile, with vaccines being the top-most item on the agenda for governments and investors due to the pandemic, the global vaccine industry will have many new opportunities to grow from a $40 billion industry to more than $75 billion by 2025 on the back of increased advocacy, greater acceptability of advanced platforms such as mRNA, and a larger market amid Covid booster doses, according to a report Taking India’s Life Sciences Industry to the Global Stage by consulting firm Kearney and CII. The Indian vaccine industry, on the other hand, can grow from $2 billion to $4 billion or even $5 billion.