Bafna Pharmaceuticals—Looking for merger partners in UK

The journey of Bafna Pharmaceuticals was set off in 1981 as a proprietary concern by Bafna Mahaveer Chand, and within the next three years, the company had its own manufacturing unit. Bafna started its production with its tablets facility and subsequently added capsule and oral syrup facilities respectively. The facility for producing betalactam products was constructed in the year 2001 in a separate block. Bafna Mahaveer Chand, Chairman and Managing Director, Bafna, "Our focus initially was on exports to not so regulated markets and domestic institutional supplies, and we were fairly successful. Further, we started focusing on the regulated market of Europe and US, and built another facility for non-betalactum solid oral dosage forms and received Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) accreditation for it. We are probably one of the few SMEs in Europe."

"Pharma is becoming a 'big boy's' game, and for small scale industries (SSI) and SMEs it is always a struggle. But we enjoyed every bit of it," says Chand. He adds, "When we stared in 1995, our basic competition was SSI, but now the trend has changed and competition is with SSIs as well as big companies."

Getting there

Bafna was awarded the WHO Good manufacturing practice (GMP) in the year 1995. The company also bagged the Best Supplier Award from the State Pharmaceutical Corporation of Sri Lanka on 30th July 2005. Bafna had a major breakthrough when it clinched the manufacturing contract from Croslands Generic Division, which was subsequently taken over by Ranbaxy Laboratories. The company was involved in the execution of the contract from 1994 to 2001. Bafna's current manufacturing facilities are set up at Chennai. It has recently acquired 2.65 acres of factory land in Grantylon Village, near Chennai to expand its operations to regulated market like US and UK and to manufacture its own products. The company's chief aim is to achieve a turnover of Rs 500 crore by 2013 by focusing on prescription drugs in the global market and contract manufacturing and dossier filing in regulated markets. "Our vision is to become the leading, professionally run global pharma company, setting standards across the pharma value chain." On expansion plans, Chand says, "We are looking for some UK based company for merger. We are also in the process of setting formulation development R&D, and are planning to file ANDAs for the US market. In next five years we should be a global pharma company."