April 01, 2010 Mumbai: Karmic Lifesciences, one of the fastest growing Indian CROs (Contract Research Organization) received its second round of undisclosed investment from Basil Global Corporation, a Mauritius based venture capital firm focused on investing in Indian IT and Healthcare companies.

This round of funding follows the first round of $ 0.5 Mn funding into the company by Indian Angel Network, a focused angel fund which invests in young promising start-ups in April, 2009. The investments in the company have been made for a minority stake. The company plans to use the proceeds of the fund raising towards expanding sales in the US and European markets and setting up a world-class clinical trial and data management delivery center in an SEZ unit in Mumbai.

The company has already hired a few senior professionals including Dr. Shreekant Sapatnekar, ex Director of the prestigious Haffkine Institute and Dr. MV Nagendran, MD Cardiology with 18 years of clinical trial experience and has won a few key US-FDA contracts in Q4, FY ‘2009-10.

Says Nidhi Saxena, Founder & CEO of Karmic Lifesciences and a first generation entrepreneur, “The Basil investment comes at the right time and should give us wings to fly. It re-iterates the huge potential of the Indian Lifesciences industry and puts us in good stead as we prepare for aggressive growth and global traction. Also, the first-hand entrepreneurial experience and professional calibre of the Basil Team including Rajeev and Sanjiv will be a valuable source of learning for us.”

Says Sanjiv Maheshwari, member of the Investment Committee at Basil Partners who now sits on Karmic’s board, “We are excited about our investment in Karmic and have chosen it as one of our portfolio companies based on traits we normally look for – a sound and high quality management team, a niche focus in the emerging, high growth lifesciences industry and a profitable business model. We are confident about the scalability of the venture and our own ability to add value to it.”

Karmic Lifesciences is a one of the fastest growing, ISO 9001: 2000 certified and full-service contract research organizations based out of Mumbai, India. Karmic provides end-to-end ICH-GCP compliant   clinical services including Clinical Trial Management, Clinical Data Management, Medical Writing, Biostatistics and Regulatory Submissions/Approvals and has experience of handling 50+ Phase II-IV clinical studies in multiple therapeutic areas including Oncology, Neurology, Cardiovascular, Metabolic Disorders, Immunology etc. It further has a fully US-FDA 21 CFR Part 11 compliant systems infrastructure with Clintrial 4.6, SAS 9.1.3, MedDRA 13.0 and WHODD. Its team size comprises of 40+ qualified doctors and clinical professionals and it has offices in Bangalore, Delhi and Pune besides Mumbai.

For more information or details regarding Karmic, contact sales@karmiclifesciences.com

Basil Partners is a venture capital fund focused on investing in either Indian / Asian companies which seek to expand into global markets or US / European companies which have an India / Asia centric offshore based model. Basil’s partnership based investment philosophy is backed by a highly experienced and skilled Management Team with a wide exposure to a variety of IT / ITES industry segments. They have an excellent track record of over 20 years each in large and fast growing organizations. BASIL spends significant time with our Portfolio companies supporting them at all levels including providing Sales, Managerial and Operational assistance.