Will invest Rs. 2k cr in small molecules segment in 3-4 yrs: Biocon CEO & MD.

After a muted Q4 show, Biocon CEO and MD Siddharth Mittal in an interview with Samreen Ahmad says the Covid-19 impact may have pulled the biologics business down by Rs.100 crore in the quarter but the company is on track to achieve the $1 billion revenue target from the segment by 2022. He also reveals plans of investment of Rs. 2,000 crore in the next three to four years in the small molecules segment. This quarter, the company also exited its JV with UAE's Neopharma, which was owned by Indian billionaire B R Shetty, who is now enveloped in allegations of financial irregularities.

Is it a one-off impact and will the company stick to its revenue target of $1 billion by 2022 in biologics?

Yes, the biosimilars team is confident of delivering those numbers and we are already expecting recovery to happen from the next quarter. By the second quarter of FY21, we expect normalisation of growth as we have deployed our risk mitigation strategies.

The small molecules business is ahead of biologics in terms of revenue. By when is this segment likely to reach the $1 billion revenue milestone?

Biocon started its pharma business two decades ago with small molecules and for 10-odd years we earned the entire revenue from this segment. In the past 10 years, we have invested everything in biosimilars and there was hardly any investment done in small molecules. We are now starting to reinvest in a portfolio of APIs and generic formulations in both R&D and manufacturing capacity. Once we start seeing an impact of this, it will be at least 2-3 years before you see numbers going up. We aspire to be in line with the generics industry and for that we need to create additional capacities and develop more products. So for 2-3 years we will be in an investment mode.

BS