Vimta Laboratories—First Indian CRO on the stock exchanges

Dr S P Vasireddi, Chairman and MD and V Harriman, Director, Technical, Vimta Laboratories, established Vimta in 1984 as a single bench laboratory. Vasireddi started his career as a chemist but his passion for quality motivated him to establish Vimta with a long term objective of providing contract research and testing services to national and international markets.

Under the able leadership of Vasireddi, the single bench facility has grown into a scientific community with over 400 professionals, including PhDs and medical doctors. Stepping into new business was not easy as there were the initial hurdles of establishing credibility, as Vimta's multiple laboratory services under one roof was a new concept in the private sector. "It was difficult to get financial assistance as bankers even refused initially to recognise us as a viable business. Vimta started moving forward in 1985 after recognition from the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and installation of India's first privately owned Inductive Coupled Plasma Spectrometer (ICP) at their facility which brought in a lot of interest both from academia and industry," informs Vasireddi.

'Teching' advantage

Vimta supports regulatory authorities in mandatory certification of food and agri products exported from India. Vimta assists food industry commissions for nutritional labelling, food safety evaluations, trace analysis and shelf life studies. Technology is one of the key drivers of Vimta. Vimta has a policy to protect itself from technological obsolescence so as to serve its customers efficiently. Thus all technologies deployed at Vimta are duly validated to verify their intended purpose. Vimta is equipped with leading edge technologies with the help of a partnership with IBM. In 1993, Vimta was the first Indian CRO to go public and be listed on the stock exchanges. Another first came in 2003, when Vimta became the first Indian CRO to have its bioequivalence (BE) study data accepted by the US FDA.

More to come

Vimta is always exploring new horizons. Giving more details, Vasireddi says, "Currently our new life sciences facility set up in Genome Valley, Shameerpet, Hyderabad is fully validated and houses various laboratories, ie. food, water, drugs, residues, advanced molecular biology etc. complying with cGMP requirements. In the next five years, the thrust areas will be advanced molecular biology (Proteomics and Genomics), preclinical toxicology, R&D and Bio-informatics."

He adds, "We have been helping the Indian pharma industry both in their manufacturing and R&D activities. We have been offering clinical research, stability, quality control and R&D services for new molecules, API and formulations for the southern pharma industry based out of Hyderabad and other regions." Vimta's goal is to enter the list of top 10 CROs in India by 2010. With the current growth rate it is indeed an achievable task for Vimta.