Daijiworld News Network –Mangalore (VM)

• Ajith Kamath, who hails from Mulky, is the chairman and managing director of the company.

• Sudheer P Ghate, the chairman and managing director of Magnum Intergrafiks is the director in the company

Mangalore, May 18: A feather on the cap of Arch Pharmalabs Limited is the CNBC –ICICI Emerging India-2006 Award in the Pharma category. The company headed by its chairman and managing director Ajith Kamath, a native of Mulky and Magnum Intergrafiks chairman Sudheer P Ghate as is director, coveted the prestigious award which will be presented on Saturday May 20 at special function organised by the CNBC in Mumbai. The event will be telecast by CNBC on Saturday at 10.30 am repeated at 5.30 pm on the same day and 7 pm on Sunday.

Ajith Kamath  &  Sudheer P Ghate

The award is instituted by CNBC-TV18 to encourage and endorse business achievement in India. Amongst the 36,000 entries in nine segments, Arch Phamalabs ltd was chosen the best in the Pharma and Chemicals category.

The company is captained by Ajith who started his career with a large Indian business house in 1990. He started his own company Arch Financial Services with an initial capital of Rs 5,000. By 1998, Arch Financial Services established itself as a leading financial services company in Mumbai having among its clients, many multinationals and large Indian business houses.

Arch Pharmalabs was formed to handle the Pharma business. In 1999, he started off with contract manufacturing in the unit by extending marketing and working capital support and ended up with a major export order of around Rs 5 crore within the first 3 months itself.

In the first year itself Arch Pharma could penetrate into the European and Latin American Pharma markets. In 2001 Arch proposed a rehabilitation scheme with BIFR to take-over Merven Drug Products. It offered to retain all the jobs in Merven. The settlement scheme also proposed to repay all the creditors of Merven in full.

In the same year Arch Pharmalabs set up its own green field plant in Tarapur to manufacture active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). It also received the export house status from DGFT, Ministry of Commerce. The take over proposal of Merven was approved by BIFR in 2002. Ajit Kamath was nominated as the chairman and managing director of the merged entity.

Arch Pharmalabs has had two more acquisitions besides setting up its own facility. It acquired a unit in Badlapur and Ambemath. It established the Corporate R&D Center of Arch Pharmalabs at Badlapur, near Mumbai, which is granted recognition by the DSIR (Dept of Scientific and Industrial Research) in 2005.

Currently, Arch Pharmalabs limited has six manufacturing locations, of which four are owned and two are in units that are released to them.

Now, Arch Pharmalabs has become the global leader in a particular segment of pharma intermediates, namely, Isoxazole side-chains.