India’s TOP 500 Companies 2020

INDIA’S TOP 500 COMPANIES 2020 124 Experts’ View Hikal Limited SAMEER HIREMATH Joint MD & CEO Hikal Ltd has a rich history of more than three decades, and the company has registered highest ever revenues and profits in FY19. How do you perceive the company’s success? According to you, what are the most significant milestones for the company since its inception? FY19 was a momentous year for Hikal, with the highest ever revenues and profits. Our performance confirmed our status as one of the leading manufacturers of fine chemicals to the global Pharmaceutical, Animal Health, Biocides, Crop Protection and Specialty Chemicals industries. This was made possible by our pristine track record of 32 years, a strong R&D capability and focus on technology with regulatory compliance and good corporate governance. Our core is chemistry and technology. We first started operations as a contract manufacturing organization in the crop sciences and veterinary field, when many large pharma companies had strong in-house crop sciences divisions. Having initially focused on intermediates, we steadily climbed up the value chain and expanded our scope of activities to include the manufacture of active ingredients. In 1995, we entered into a long-term contract manufacturing agreement with Merck, Sharpe and Dohme (MSD) for a veterinary and crop science product, which led us to build a greenfield production facility at Taloja, specifically dedicated to this project. This partnership marked a significant milestone in Hikal’s history, as it required an overall investment of over US$ 35 million in the mid-1990s. Sometime around the early 2000s, we moved into the pharmaceuticals business. This was made possible due to our successful track record of working with global multinational companies in the crop sciences industry. Although very different in terms of products and markets, the broad guidelines of manufacturing and development remained principally the same. In the year 2000, we acquired Novartis India’s manufacturing site when the global entities of Sandoz and Novartis merged; this was to sustain our entry into the pharmaceutical field. A few years later, we further expanded our production capacitywith the acquisition of a small Indian API company based in Bangalore. We substantially invested in the new facility, which subsequently became the company’s first US FDA- approved manufacturing site. It was in 2005-06 that we signed a multiproduct contract for the manufacture of several APIs with a leading global multinational company for their blockbuster products, which still continues till date. Hikal continued to partner with global pharmaceutical and agrochemical companies. We demonstrated our potential in 2008 when IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, agreed to invest US$ 15 million by way of equity participation, a major milestone in Hikal’s growth. Recently in 2019, the US FDA audited our facilities in Jigani, Bengaluru and Panoli, Gujarat. We received a clean EIR (Establishment Inspection Report) for both facilities, with Zero 483 observations in Panoli. This makes us proudly stand out as one of the few Indian manufacturers that has an “ Partnering with leading multinational companies very early in our company’s history instilled a mindset where quality and compliance are paramount, and transparency and delivery are the key to success. ” Dun & Bradstreet