Immuneel Therapeutics, a cancer therapy startup cofounded by Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, has raised over Rs 100 crore in new funding to expand manufacturing, reduce treatment costs and take its therapy to markets outside India.
The round saw participation from Singularity AMC, Rainmatter by Zerodha, high-net-worth individuals, and existing investors, including Mazumdar-Shaw, Eight Roads Ventures and F-Prime Capital, the company said in a statement on Monday.
The Bengaluru-based company makes CAR-T therapy, a form of cancer treatment where a patient’s own immune cells are taken out, trained in a lab to fight cancer, and then put back into the body. The treatment has been seen as a breakthrough globally, but has remained out of reach for most patients because it is highly expensive and difficult to develop.
How the funds will be used
Immuneel will use the capital to increase the production capacity of Qartemi, its CAR-T therapy for blood cancers, and expand into Southeast Asia, other parts of the Asia Pacific and the Middle East.
Amit Mookim, chief executive of Immuneel Therapeutics, told ET that the company’s immediate focus is to make the treatment available to more patients at lower costs.
“What we are trying to solve for is building capacity at scale in cost-effective ways,” Mookim said. “The cost of this therapy in the West is almost $400,000 to $500,000. And for the patient, it ends up being $600,000 to $700,000. We have brought it at 10% of this cost. And we will endeavour to bring it down even further as we put more scale.”
“India is a large market. We’ve tied up with all the large hospitals and leading cancer institutions. What we are now trying to solve for is to scale,” he said, explaining the company's main challenge.
Localising supply
The cost of such treatment depends on expensive ingredients and a complex lab process, since every dose is made separately for each patient. Mookim said Immuneel is trying to make the manufacturing process more efficient through localisation.
“We are trying to localise parts of the supply chain,” he explained. “We are trying to value-engineer the usage, the consumption, the production of these reagents and vectors. And we are trying to work on innovations in technology and processes of manufacturing.”
The fundraise comes as investors are beginning to look more seriously at Indian deeptech and biotech startups, though capital for such companies remains harder to raise than for software, consumer internet or fintech companies.
“Many investors still don’t understand biotech,” Mookim said. “Everybody is fascinated by the impact we are creating. But the question they ask is, how will the company realise value? How will we get the exit? How is the science risk that we are taking going to translate into revenues?”
Eye on foreign markets
For Immuneel, markets outside India are part of the business plan. Mookim said several countries in Asia, West Asia and Africa have a large cancer burden but limited access to advanced therapies.
“Almost 60-70% of the disease burden of the world is in the Middle East, Africa and APAC region, though 80% of the innovation and availability is in the West,” he said. “It’s a hugely unaddressed market.”
Immuneel is looking to build a supply chain from India to serve patients in these markets, rather than have them travel to the US or Europe for treatment.
