Contract research firm Anthem Biosciences files for Rs 3,395 crore IPO

Anthem Biosciences was incorporated in 2006 by ex-Biocon executive Ajay Bharadwaj along with chief operating Officer KC Ravindra and chief scientific officer Ganesh Sambasivam.

Contract research company Anthem Biosciences has filed for a Rs 3,395 crore ($397 million) initial public offering, as per the Draft Red Herring Prospectus filing with BSE on December 31.

Anthem Bio will not be issuing fresh shares in the public issue. Promoters Ganesh Sambasivam, and K Ravindra Chandrappa are looking to sell stake through the Offer For Sale route via the public issue. The selling shareholders will be entitled to the proceeds from the IPO and the company will not receive any proceeds from the Offer.

Ganesh Sambasivam, K Ravindra Chandrappa are looking to sell shares to the tune of Rs 350 crore each, while investor Viridity Tone LLP is aiming to mop up Rs 1,325 crore. Portsmouth Technologies LLC is looking to sell Rs 320 crore worth of shares. Other selling shareholders include Malay J Barua, Rupesh N Kinekar, Satish Sharma, Prakash Kariabettan and K Ramakrishnan.

The lead managers of the public issue are JM Financial, Citi, JPMorgan and Nomura, with Kfintech being the registrar to the public issue.

Pre-Offer shareholding of Promoters and Promoter Group, and selling shareholders:

On June 2020, Moneycontrol was the first to report that Anthem Biosciences was looking to dilute stake, valuing the entire firm at $1 billion. Investment bank O3 capital was mandated to find a buyer, the report had added. Ajay Bhardwaj, CEO, Anthem Biosciences had at that time said, “Anthem is at an inflection point in its growth after establishing its credentials as a researcher and manufacturer of both chemistry-based small molecule therapeutics and fermentation-based biopharmaceuticals. It’s a rarefied space where the company has very few peers worldwide.

Anthem Bio's CEO Ajay Bhardwaj had previously said that in FY25 the focus was on growing the complex specialty ingredients business, which has a 'large market opportunity'.

Anthem Biosciences offers early-stage drug discovery services and over the years has forward-integrated into contract manufacturing as well. Anthem competes with the likes of Syngene International and Divi's Laboratories among India's API manufacturers.

According to Statista, the global size of the contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMO) market is projected to exceed $320 billion by 2033.