Ocimum Biosolutions to raise $5.5mn

The company plans to offload less than 20% of its equity base

Ocimum Biosolutions, a life sciences R&D enabling company, is looking at offloading less than 20 per cent of its equity base. The $3-million company is planning to raise funds worth around $5.5 million and is in advanced stages of negotiations with external investors.

Speaking to Business Standard, Anuradha Acharya, chief executive officer of Ocimum Biosolutions, said, "Our company is primarily held by the promoters. Employees hold around 10 per cent of the stake. We are, however, looking at raising funds worth around $5.5 million and are in parleys with external investors. We will be offloading less than 20 per cent of our equity base."

Apart from India, Ocimum operates from the US and Germany. "We are legally merging the US and German entities with the Indian company," Acharya said.

Meanwhile, the company is also scouting for acquisitions and is likely to finalise one in the next six months.

"We are eyeing companies that are both in the IT and lifesciences space or have a presence in the oligonucleotide synthesis space," Acharya said.

The company is also looking at transferring some work with regard to oligonucleotide synthesis from the US to India, to leverage the advantages of low cost and talent availability.

Ocimum Biosolutions is focused on areas of bioIT, microarrays and research services. The microarrays division of Ocimum was acquired last year from MWG Biotech, a global genomics solution provider with production sites in the US, Germany and India.

"Going forward, we are looking at adding more divisions, products and employees to our company,"Acharya said.

Ocimum has 150 employees globally, with 115 of them being in India. It has seven products in its portfolio with more than 200 clients across the globe. "We may bag a client from Jamaica soon," Acharya said.

Some of Ocimum's clients include Ranbaxy, Tecan and Dow AgroSciences.