BS People: Subramanyam Maddala

AMRI chooses Maddala to help it grow

US-based Albany Molecular Research Inc (AMRI) seems to have found the right person to head its India operations. The medicine chemistry company, which is struggling with flat growth numbers and losses from global operations, sees growth in research as well as in the API (active pharmaceutical ingredients) business to come from this part of the world.  

Subramanyam Maddala, the new president of AMRI India operations, is more than happy to take up this challenge. "I like challenges. I am happy not with managing what is already there but in creating something new,” says Maddala. 

For someone with a research and management background and having worked for about eight pharma companies in various leadership roles in a span of 25 years, accomplishment is a given. 

The Indian outsourcing model had already brought many global pharma companies to set up shop here with the kind of advantage it offers both in terms of costs and chemists. AMRI wants to be a part of this growth story.

Maddala’s immediate and medium-term agenda is to make AMRI’s Hyderabad research centre into a full-fledged life cycle management company in drug development that can handle all the 1, 2 and 3 phases of clinical research. Besides, it wants to utilise the potential of the available talent pool here. Maddala would also work on increasing API manufacturing operations as Aurangabad facilities already comply with good manufacturing standards (GMP). "Our target in the next four to five years is to pick up pace to achieve a growth rate of 32-33 per cent in the overall business annually," he said.

AMRI provides Subramanyam Maddala with a second opportunity to work from his hometown, Hyderabad, long after he left Matrix Laboratories and Hyderabad for bigger assignments in companies like Glenmark, Piramal, Torrent, SOL, Lupin and Shasun Pharmaceuticals Limited.