Global contract research and development organisation (CRDO) GVK Bio is expecting strong growth in 2020 due to a ‘crescendo of factors’.
Business growth
The company has seen its development services quickly become the fastest growing part of its business thanks to a consolidated customer base in discovery and research services.
Manni Kantipudi, chief executive officer, said: “In the last year we have seen record revenues and teen figure growth for the company. But what is interesting is that whilst our research services – for which we are still best known – are growing at twice the market rate, it’s in development services that we are seeing growth running at three times the industry average.”
The company attributes its recent successes to robust regulatory standards and trust built up by pharma companies in the last few years.
GVK Bio also believes that trade tensions between the US and China have led to pharma companies seeking different services outside of China to mitigate risk.
“While we continue to benefit from our existing research services and our customers are increasingly staying with us now into development, we are also benefiting from wider macro market conditions, and seeing new customers approach us. Over the past year, there has been an influx of interest from Western life sciences firms, looking to diversify their discovery and development services outside of China to mitigate risk,” Kantipudi added.
“This is in part due to trade tensions, but also due to tightening regulations and safety-related plant closures in China. The resulting disruption in the global supply chain, be it in discovery or development, has led to increasing interest in geographically diverse sourcing strategies, and GVK BIO, with its proven track record, has been a big beneficiary. So when you add this trend to the rise in outsourcing across pharma and the increasing virtualisation of biotechs, we are bullish about our growth prospects through 2020 and beyond.”