How Biologics and Complex Therapies Are Reshaping CDMO Strategy

India’s CDMO sector is moving beyond its traditional strengths as demand grows for complex therapies, advanced modalities, and integrated development capabilities. At the center of this shift is a leadership challenge: building global-scale capabilities while earning customer trust across markets.

In this conversation with Thiruamuthan, Assistant Editor at India Pharma Outlook, Akhil Ravi, CEO, Aurigene Pharmaceutical, shares his perspective on building a scalable CDMO business, earning long-term customer trust, developing capabilities in complex therapies, and strengthening India’s position in the global CDMO market. He also discusses how talent and infrastructure are shaping the sector’s growth through 2030.

Akhil Ravi is a distinguished leader with more than 19 years of experience spanning entrepreneurship, strategy, manufacturing, and business development. His career across ITC, McKinsey, and Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories has shaped his approach to leadership, business building, talent development, and strategic investment.

Read the full interview to understand how Indian CDMOs can strengthen their global position.

You’ve worked across very different environments, from ITC to McKinsey and now Aurigene. How has that journey changed the way you think about leadership?

My first job at ITC, a large Indian conglomerate, was primarily about learning the fundamentals. However, I believe my learning journey truly began when I started my own venture in 2009. That experience taught me the basics of starting and building a new business and understanding what it takes to create something from the ground up.

Later, at McKinsey, a global consulting firm, I worked with very large organizations and learned how to solve complex problems at scale. The experience of working with both small and large organizations helped me develop a strong understanding of business fundamentals from different perspectives.

Over the last eight-plus years at Dr. Reddy’s, my learning journey has evolved further. I started by leading small teams of five to ten people and today lead a team of more than 1,000. This transition has taught me how to move beyond the technical aspects of a role and focus on people—their aspirations, emotions, motivations, and development.

It has been a challenging but deeply enriching journey. The organization has also supported me through various leadership development programs, which have helped me navigate this transition effectively.

More broadly, my understanding of leadership has changed significantly. There is a clear difference between what we learn about leadership in management books and what leadership looks like in practice. Over the past eight years, particularly during my journey at Dr. Reddy’s, that understanding has evolved considerably.

Since taking on the leadership role at Aurigene, what have you learned about what it takes to build a successful CDMO business in today’s pharma industry?

I think the first step was being honest about the fact that I did not understand the CDMO business when I started. I had to learn extensively from our own employees, our customers, and industry peers who were willing to share the fundamentals of the industry.

Once we gathered those insights and synthesized them into a clear understanding of what it takes to build and grow a successful CDMO business, we were able to put the right strategies and actions in place.

The first principle, therefore, was curiosity.  The second was building and maintaining customer trust. As we grew, we realized that trust would be critical to building long-term customer relationships. To support this, we created a simple operating model that dedicated manufacturing lines to our CDMO clients.

This approach strengthened customer confidence while also making our internal operations more efficient. It gave us a model that we could replicate and scale as the business grew.

The third factor was leveraging our existing strengths. We had significant capacity, a strong track record in quality, and highly capable people. Once customers experienced this ecosystem, they became convinced that we were the right partner to work with.

These factors helped us scale the CDMO business significantly over the four years I have been in this role. We initially focused on API CDMO sales. Over the last couple of years, our drug product CDMO sales have also grown considerably.

Here, we followed the same playbook: understand the market, identify our existing strengths, and package our capabilities into a solution that simplifies operations, builds customer trust, and can be scaled effectively.

Another critical factor was building the right team to scale the business. Most of the leaders who have worked with me over the last four to five years are relatively new to their roles. Some are part of the leadership team, while others are one level below.

They have brought tremendous energy and new ideas to the business. My role has been to help them execute, remove barriers, and create the environment they need to deliver on our shared vision.

Ultimately, that energy and belief within the team have been extremely important. Having the right people alongside me, who believed in the vision and were willing to build it together, has been one of the biggest drivers of our journey.

We are seeing more biologics, peptides, oligonucleotides, and other complex therapies entering drug pipelines. How is this changing what pharma companies look for in a CDMO partner?

You are right. What we broadly call new modalities have increased significantly, with peptides, antibodies, and other complex therapies becoming a larger part of drug pipelines.

As a company, we made deliberate choices about where we wanted to invest. We decided to focus on building our peptide and antibody platforms. Alongside our small-molecule capabilities, we have invested significant capital to scale these areas and strengthen our CDMO business.

One advantage was that we already had experience with small-scale synthesis of both peptides and antibodies. This gave us an existing foundation and access to some customers. We engaged with these customers early, shared our plans, and sought their guidance on what they would expect from a CDMO partner.

Based on those inputs, we were able to reallocate some of our existing peptide and antibody capacity toward CDMO work. As the business grew and we secured more projects, we continued to invest in additional capacity.

The second critical factor was talent. These are highly specialized technologies, so we needed people with the right expertise and end-to-end understanding of the business. That includes customer management, supply chain, quality, process development, manufacturing, and outbound logistics.

Building the complete capability across this value chain has been essential. Thankfully, we have earned the trust of several customers who are now working with us on their molecules. Their confidence has played an important role in helping us scale the business.

We are now doubling down on both areas—peptides and antibodies. Our focus is on expanding capacity, strengthening our technical capabilities, and building a stronger presence at the front end of the CDMO value chain.

When a therapy is more complex, what are some of the biggest challenges CDMOs face in moving it from early development to manufacturing?

Typically, customer needs are quite different in the early and late phases of development. In the early phase, the priority is speed. The goal is to move quickly and get the molecule to a stage where it can be tested on patients.  As the therapy moves into the late phase, the priorities change. Customers begin to focus much more on reliability, capacity, quality, and process robustness.

This means CDMOs need to build capabilities that address the specific requirements of each stage. That is why we have an early-phase development service supported by a dedicated team focused on these needs.

For late-phase programs, we have a separate team that focuses on reliability, capacity, quality, process robustness, cost, and speed. The objective is to ensure that the customer's requirements are consistently met as the program moves toward commercial manufacturing.

This differentiation has been an important part of our approach because the needs of customers are fundamentally different across the two phases.

Beyond manufacturing capabilities, what do you think makes a CDMO a partner that pharma companies can rely on for the long term?

There are certain foundations that every service provider like us needs to have. These include capacity, quality, robust quality processes, safety, and more sustainability and people—the right talent to ensure these facilities operate at the highest standards.

These are the basic requirements to even qualify to compete in this space. Without these fundamental capabilities, you cannot effectively participate in the CDMO industry.

What differentiates good players from the rest, however, goes beyond these foundations. It comes down to cross-functional processes, organizational culture, the ability to make decisions quickly, and the willingness to invest in the right areas.

It is also about building strong customer relationships, creating effective processes to attract and develop talent, and training people well within the organization. These are the factors that differentiate leading companies from average ones.

We had an advantage in that we already had good infrastructure and strong people. The key was to direct their energy toward the right priorities. That helped us significantly scale both our drug discovery services and CDMO businesses.

Ultimately, the foundations were already in place. The real opportunity was to channel the team's energy in the right direction and bring in the right people who could partner with me in executing the vision.

Aurigene works across drug discovery, development, manufacturing, APIs, formulations, and biologics. How does having these capabilities under one roof help when working on complex therapies?

Aurigene spans the full journey from early drug discovery and clinical development to commercial manufacturing. I think that breadth is one of the key values that some customers see in us. They do not have to change service providers as they move from one stage of the journey to the next. Depending on where they start, they can continue working with us as their programs progress.

At the same time, each part of this journey requires distinct capabilities. Drug discovery is very different from clinical development, while commercial manufacturing requires a completely different set of capabilities. Our challenge is to maintain the right focus across all these areas and continue building the capacity and expertise required to support them.

We are seeing strong growth potential across these businesses, and all three areas are growing rapidly. Over the last few years, we have achieved an average CAGR of almost 30 percent across these areas, with our manufacturing business being a key growth driver.

However, having capabilities across the value chain is only one part of the equation. When we start working with a customer for the first time, they often want to understand our key differentiator. They want to know the one or two things we can do particularly well, whether in terms of technology, capacity, or execution.

It is important to deliver those first projects successfully before trying to expand the relationship. We have seen several instances where we started with a customer in one part of the business, delivered a strong outcome, and earned their trust. Those individuals then introduced us to other teams within the same organization, allowing us to expand our relationship.

So, ultimately, it comes down to execution. You need to deliver the first few programs well, build trust with the customer, and provide consistently strong service. Once that foundation is established, you have the opportunity to grow the relationship across more areas of the business.

India has traditionally been strong in APIs and generic drug manufacturing. What do you think Indian CDMOs need to do differently to build a stronger position in biologics and other complex therapies?

I would first emphasize that there is still significant potential for India even in API manufacturing from a CDMO perspective. India currently accounts for less than 4 percent of the global API CDMO market, which indicates substantial headroom for growth.

The industry can build on the strengths developed over the last 40 to 50 years. Established companies such as Dr. Reddy’s and Sun Pharma have helped create a strong foundation for the country’s pharmaceutical manufacturing capabilities. There is still considerable opportunity to build on that foundation and expand India’s global share.

When it comes to new modalities such as antibodies and peptides, several companies have already started investing in these areas. The first priority, in my view, is to build world-class capacity.

When a customer walks into a facility in India, they should not experience any difference from what they would see in Boston, Basel, or Shanghai. The infrastructure, quality standards, processes, and overall experience should be comparable to the best facilities globally.

That is also the feedback we have received from customers. When they visit our biologics or peptide facilities, some have told us that they could be in Vizag or San Diego and the experience inside the facility feels the same. Building this kind of world-class infrastructure is therefore critical.

The second area is talent. China has done a good job of bringing experienced talent back from the US and Europe and using that expertise to build and train larger teams locally. I think India is beginning to see a similar trend.

We have strong talent in India that can learn quickly. However, in emerging areas such as new modalities, having experienced professionals who have already worked in these technologies can provide valuable guidance and help build capabilities faster.

The third factor is customer trust. Customers have traditionally worked with other countries for these complex modalities, so Indian CDMOs need to demonstrate that they can deliver at the same global standards. That trust is beginning to build, and we are already seeing deals being announced in these areas.

I am encouraged by the growth of the Indian CDMO industry in new modalities. However, the opportunity remains much larger. India's share of the global CDMO market is still relatively small, which means there is significant room for the industry to grow and strengthen its position globally.

From your experience across strategy, manufacturing, and business development, how are CDMOs thinking differently about investments and capabilities today?

The CDMO sector, and the broader pharmaceutical industry, is highly capital-intensive. So, one important question is how companies can access the capital needed to grow.

Different companies are taking different approaches. Some are raising money through the market, including IPOs and private equity. Others are reallocating capital within their existing businesses. That is the approach we have taken, directing our internal cash toward growing the CDMO business.

Some companies are also acquiring assets to build capabilities more quickly and then scale them over time.

So, different companies are taking different approaches to allocating capital and building their CDMO capabilities. But, as I said earlier, the opportunity is much larger. I think we probably need to be a little bolder in allocating more capital toward this space.

There are many strong entrepreneurs in the Indian CDMO sector who can access this capital and build their businesses. If they can also earn the trust of more customers, there is significant potential for the sector to grow further.

India has introduced several policies and initiatives to support the pharmaceutical and CDMO sectors. Beyond the schemes already in place, what more do you think the government can do to help Indian companies become stronger competitors in the global market?

I am glad that the government is thinking about such schemes to support the growth of the pharmaceutical sector. I think they have taken some inspiration from the Chinese government, which has placed a lot of focus on the biotech and pharma CDMO space, CROs, and drug discovery to grow these sectors.

The government has launched a few schemes, including the Biopharma SHAKTI scheme, and has allocated budgets to this space. The policies are also being drafted in consultation with the industry, and we have been involved in some of those discussions. So, the direction is right, and that is positive to see. We are obviously yet to understand exactly how this will play out.

We have seen the benefits of the PLI scheme primarily from a generic drug perspective. But when we look at innovation, the risks are much higher. Some of these new modalities also require extremely high levels of investment. The government support in understanding this space, having the right experts involved, and working with the industry in a faster way to direct risk capital toward the sector would really help.

In addition to capital, if the government can also incentivize Indian-origin thought leaders in the industry to come back and support the sector, that could be another area to focus on. This is something the Chinese have done very well.

When you look towards 2030, which emerging therapies or shifts in drug development do you think could reshape the CDMO industry most?

There are many emerging modalities. But despite these developments, one thing that has not changed is that small-molecule chemistry will continue to be important. Small molecules still account for about 40 percent of the pipeline. The chemistry is becoming more complex, with increasingly difficult reactions. So, this area will continue to be relevant, and we need to keep strengthening our capabilities in it.

Among the newer modalities, there are antibodies, cell and gene therapy, peptides, and ADCs, or antibody-drug conjugates. We are also seeing growth in areas such as siRNA and oligonucleotides. With multiple emerging technologies, companies need to make choices and develop deep expertise in the areas they choose to focus on. It is very difficult to become an expert in everything.

We have made some choices about where we want to focus. For now, our primary focus is on peptides and antibodies. We have also made some early, low-capital investments in areas such as oligonucleotides and ADCs, mainly at the laboratory level.

The idea is to start working in these areas and understand them before making larger investments. By working with a range of customers and building experience in these new modalities, we can better understand the space and then make bigger bets with greater confidence.

What is your personal mantra?

The first one is discipline. Trying to be disciplined about health and creating a routine, both personally and professionally, has always helped me.

The second is having a learning mindset. I try to learn from my team, from external stakeholders, and through different channels such as books and podcasts. You need to keep learning and stay updated because things are changing quite a bit.

The third is focus. At any given point, I try to focus on one or two areas and really work on growing them. Another area I have developed over the years is relying more on people and letting go. Earlier, this was not a very strong skill for me. But I have realized that I cannot do everything alone. We need to rely on and trust our teams.

I am still not extremely good at it, but it is something I have developed over the last few years. These are the qualities I rely on, particularly when things are under stress.

What are five key leadership principles you would share with the next generation of leaders in the CDMO industry?

The first and foremost thing is to be curious. Pharma is a very broad industry, and there are a lot of things happening across different areas. There is a lot of work happening at the intersection of industries.

For example, we are seeing AI and pharma coming together. Within manufacturing, there are lessons that pharma can learn from industries such as automotive and chemicals. So, we need to understand what is happening elsewhere and think about how we can bring those learnings into our industry.

That is one piece of advice I would give: be curious and pay attention to what is happening around you.

The other thing I often tell my team is that what has happened in the past has happened for a reason, but that does not mean it is the absolute truth. You can question everything, and that is how we grow.

So, don't accept the status quo all the time. If you want different outcomes, sometimes you have to do things differently. Those are the two broad things I would tell the next generation of leaders who join our company: be curious and don't accept the status quo. If you find something that seems illogical, question it. Take ownership and work toward changing it.