Advent to pick majority stake in India’s Suven Pharma

Private equity firm Advent International on Monday said it has signed an agreement to buy a majority stake in India’s Suven Pharmaceuticals from the Jasti family.

Advent will also launch an open offer for an additional 26%, according to media reports. Advent is likely to pay Rs 504 a share to buy the promoters’ stake for a total of Rs 6,350 crore, the reports added. The total deal size could reportedly be around Rs 8,100 crore if the 26% open offer is subscribed.

Post the completion of the acquisition, Advent said it intends to explore the merger of its portfolio company, Cohance Lifesciences, with Suven, to build a leading end-to-end CDMO and merchant API player servicing the pharma and specialty chemical markets.

The combined entity of Suven and Cohance will focus on three growth vectors across pharma CDMO, specialty chemicals and merchant API.

“Their [Advent’s] experience and resources will launch the next phase of growth for Suven pharma. This move will benefit the Suven platform immensely. The proposed collaboration with Cohance is a win-win for Suven and its public shareholders. It will help us offer a broader set of services and multi-sites to our customers,” Suven Pharma managing director Venkateswarlu Jasti said in a statement.

The announcement comes less than three days after Advent acquired a majority stake in data science and AI solutions company Tredence by investing $175 million in its Series B round of funding.

Pankaj Patwari, managing director at Advent International, said, “Our vision for Suven is to build a $1 billion global leader, by executing effectively on the product pipeline, building new marquee customers, turbo-charging business development, and scaling up manufacturing and R&D. We will also look at acquiring synergistic businesses globally, to further build capabilities and gain new customer access.”

Suven Life Sciences provides a wide range of drug discovery and development support services to global pharma and biotech companies. Suven has state-of-art facilities with a highly qualified & experienced team of scientists.

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