Life-sci commercialization company Indegene has filed for an initial public offering with India’s securities and exchange board (SEBI), as private equity backers The Carlyle Group and Brighton Park Capital look to exit, papers show.
The company, which is headquartered in India but maintains offices in Princeton, New Jersey and Europe, is aiming to raise more than 32 billion rupees ($386.7 million), Reuters reported last week. The wire service, citing local media, couldn’t immediately confirm that figure.
PE firms Carlyle and Brighton Park, both of which took minority stakes in Indegene for $200 million in 2021, are looking to unload their stakes. Carlyle, which held a 20.8% interest in Indegene through its CA Dawn entity, has put up 17.2 million shares in the offering, and Brighton Park is set to sell up to 8.4 million shares.
Proceeds from the IPO will help to pay down debt, fund capital expenditure and pay a deferred consideration for a past acquisition, Indegene noted.
The company, through its subsidiary ILSL Holdings, bought the agency CultHealth in October for about $49.7 million, an acquisition which bolstered Indegene’s creative and medical chops. The sellers stand to earn an additional $37 million, subject to achievement of certain revenue and earnings milestones over a three-year period between April 2023 and March 2026, according to the filing.
In 2021, it acquired pricing and market-access firm Medical Marketing Economics for about $10 million, and in 2019 it scooped up digital transformation/CX consultancy DT Associates, paying about $10 million for a minority stake.
Indegene’s revenues increased 72% in the 2022 financial year versus the prior financial year, to $223.8 million, the company said, with 66% of revenues coming from North America and 27% from Europe.
In the draft papers, Indegene also noted having client relationships with 19 of the 20 largest biopharma companies in the world, adding that 70% of its total revenue over the last three financial years stems from these 19 customers.
The news also comes more than a month after AstraZeneca handed its omnichannel operations mandate to Indegene.
Company CEO Manish Gupta co-founded the firm in 1998 with four colleagues. At the time, “digital transformation” was not part of the typical corporate lexicon, at least not among healthcare companies. If the IPO comes to fruition, India-based media point out, the IPO would be the country’s biggest enterprise tech/IT services IPO since TCS in 2004.
At press time, Indegene was not immediately available to comment on the pending arrangement.
In other news Monday, Indegene said 30-year pharma marketing vet Peter Marchesini has been appointed SVP.
He will be tasked with helping life sciences companies improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their commercial processes and go-to-market approach, according to a press release.
Marchesini was most recently Eversana’s president of field solutions. Prior to that, he was co-founder and COO of Alamo Pharma Services. Earlier in his career, he served as executive director of sales and chief learning officer of inVentiv Health, and a member of its steering committee.
