Guest: Dr. Anand Anandkumar, Founder & CEO of Bugworks
Episode Summary:
How does a successful semiconductor executive, who helped shape India's chip design ecosystem, end up on the front lines of a global health crisis? In this episode, Prakash sits down with Dr. Anand Anandkumar, a former chip designer turned biotech pioneer.
Dr. Anand shares his extraordinary journey from the world of transistors and silicon to developing new drugs against the world's deadliest, drug-resistant "superbugs." He reveals the deeply personal story—including his own battle with cancer—that fuelled his pivot and gave him an unwavering resolve to solve problems that matter on a global scale.
YouTube episode link:
Key Insights:
This podcast episode with Dr. Anand Kumar of Bugworks is a deep dive into the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the future of drug discovery in India, and the profound personal motivations that drive innovation.
1. The Global Crisis of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR):
The "Silent Pandemic": AMR is a growing global health crisis. Misuse and overuse of antibiotics (often bought "like candy") are rendering them ineffective, creating untreatable "superbugs."
A Misunderstood Problem: Dr. Anand highlights that 60-70% of common infections are viral, not bacterial, meaning antibiotics are often taken unnecessarily, which accelerates resistance.
Staggering Human Cost: India alone loses an estimated 400,000-500,000 people per year to infections that can no longer be treated by existing antibiotics.
The Economic Challenge: Big Pharma has largely abandoned new antibiotic R&D because it's not profitable. Unlike a cholesterol drug taken for life, a new antibiotic must be used sparingly to prevent resistance, creating a difficult business model. This has led to a dangerous innovation gap.
2. Dr. Anand's Personal Journey & Motivation:
The Pivot from Chips to Cells: Dr. Anand began his career as a semiconductor and chip designer. His transition into biotech was sparked by a brainstorming session where the idea of applying modeling and simulation from electronics to biology was born.
A Purpose Forged by Fire: His own serious health challenges, including being a cancer survivor who was "knocked out" multiple times, became the ultimate catalyst. This experience instilled in him a powerful desire to "make my life count" and create something with a dramatic, positive impact on healthcare.
Legacy and Inspiration: His late father, a famous doctor who treated India's first AIDS patient, was a major influence, encouraging him to solve the world's biggest problems and reminding him that his work could impact billions of lives.
3. Bugworks' Groundbreaking Approach:
A New Class of Antibiotics: Bugworks is developing what could be the first truly novel class of broad-spectrum antibiotics in over 60 years.
The "Double-Trap" Strategy: Their innovative drug is designed to do two things exceptionally well:
Evade Defence: It bypasses the "efflux pumps" that bacteria use to kick out antibiotics.
Hit Two Targets: It attacks the bacteria in two essential places simultaneously (like hitting the "head and the heart"), making it extremely difficult for the bug to develop resistance.
Global Vision & Access: From day one, the vision was global. A partnership with a WHO-backed group has already secured licensing for their drug in 146 low-to-medium-income countries, ensuring that when it launches, it will be available everywhere, not just in the West.
4. The Future of Drug Discovery in India ("TechBio"):
AI as the Great Leveller: Artificial Intelligence is completely changing the game. It is dramatically accelerating drug discovery by predicting protein structures (AlphaFold), optimizing clinical trial designs, and predicting a drug's effectiveness in humans. Dr. Anand predicts an 80/20 shift where 80% of the drug value chain will be influenced by AI.
India's Unique Position: India is perfectly positioned to lead this "TechBio" revolution due to:
Affordable Innovation: The cost of R&D is significantly lower than in the West.
Talent & Infrastructure: A massive pool of tech talent and a growing ecosystem of incubators (like C-CAMP).
The Front Lines: The "worst bugs" are in India's backyard, making it the ideal place to develop solutions that will work for the world.
Key Hurdles to Overcome:
Funding Gap: Lack of patient capital for long-term, high-risk deep science projects.
Regulatory Lag: India's regulatory environment needs to accelerate to keep pace with innovation.
Private Sector Investment: A cultural shift is needed for large Indian pharma companies to invest more in local R&D and acquire innovative startups.
5. Core Philosophies:
Make Your Life Count: The driving question should be what you are doing to leave the world a better place than you found it.
Remain a Lifelong Student: Humility and the constant thirst for knowledge are essential. Dr. Anand surrounds himself with people "10x smarter" than him and is never afraid to ask the most basic questions.
Philanthropy as Self-Growth: His work with foundations like CHILD (for HIV-affected orphans) and Humanist (for cancer patients) has given him more than he has given, shaping him into a better person.
Dr. Anand Kumar’s journey is more than a business story. It’s a testament to the idea that our greatest challenges can ignite our greatest purpose. It's a story of how one person’s decision to make his life count could end up saving countless others.
Connect with our Guest:
Bugworks: bugworksresearch.com
Dr. Anand Anandkumar on LinkedIn: Anand Anandkumar | LinkedIn
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Episode Transcript:
Speakers:
Prakash Mallya (Host)
Dr. Anand Anandkumar (Guest)
(Intro Music)
[00:00:04] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: There is an opportunity truly to do deep science work that will go to 8.3 billion people around the world.
[00:00:12] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Unfortunately, if India kind of countries continue to use and abuse antibiotics like buying candy in a shop, we are the ones who, and our children and our, our grandchildren and ourselves, will face huge problems.
[00:00:26] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: 60 to 70% of infections that we get, and our family gets, are viral. They're not bacterial.
[00:00:32] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Which means if I just rest it out for four days, stay at home, take Dolo 650, stay hydrated, I'll be fine.
[00:00:42] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: My late father used to always tell me, right? He attended on India's first AIDS patient.
[00:00:47] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: He told me, when I told him I don't want to do Bugworks because it's so tough. Why should I solve the world's problem? And he said, if you crack antibiotics or oncology, your work will go to 8 billion people around the world.
(Main Episode Music Begins)
[00:01:02] Prakash Mallya: Hi viewers, welcome to Chai and Chips. Today we have Dr. Anand Kumar who is the founder and CEO of Bugworks, a biotech startup involved in inventing drugs for untreatable bacterial superbugs.
[00:01:15] Prakash Mallya: They are also involved in drug research in treating specific type of cancers. Anand was a semiconductor designer, a chip designer, believe it or not. And then he took a detour in drug research. We'll talk all about it. The company, Bugworks, has won several national and international awards. And beyond that, Anand is also involved in philanthropic efforts which we will talk about. He is a fantastic musician as well.Last but not the least, he is the co-founder of IESA, India's Electronic and Semiconductor Association, and executive member of Biotech Association of India, code-named ABLE. Welcome to the show, Anand.
[00:02:06] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Thank you so very much, Prakash. It's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
[00:02:11] Prakash Mallya: It is, it's an honor. Honor is completely mine. You have done so many different things in life, starting from chip design, you ran a couple of startups if I'm not wrong, and then you went to drug research with Bugworks and before that, another company, Cellworks, right? What made the switch? What is common? At first sight, these two are very different segments.
[00:02:35] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Yeah. Once again, thanks for having me. And Chai and Chips. So your first question starts with chips, you know, semiconductor chips. So I trained in the U.S. My Master's and PhD there and worked as a semiconductor designer, very similar to your life, your past life as well. And then came to India in 2000, thinking I'll be here for two years before going back to U.S. And I was the founding managing director for two companies in the electronics area and life was great. We just started the semiconductor association in India. And when there was no formal semiconductor association, and today we have 600 or 650 members in the semiconductor association.
[00:03:14] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: And it was interesting how life plays out. So I was sitting together with some of my friends from the Bay Area in Whitefield, Bangalore, and we were sitting and thinking saying, hey, semiconductors are really booming. We are using modeling and simulation for transistor circuit design. Are there other areas that we could explore? And we started thinking about financial services to nuclear power to many things. And then a biologist joined that gathering, right? A husband-wife team. She had just come back from Stanford, a neurobiologist. And we said, can we actually use modeling and simulation for biology?
[00:03:50] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: So it's not that I was so great and I had this great vision and intelligence, but I had the passion to say, could we actually take what we learned in semiconductor industry and use that in the biology space to model biological pathways. That's where the thought process started coming. And in my 40s, I started studying biology. So I'm still, my knowledge is very shallow, but enough to make a cogent business case. So Prakash, I started studying biology and the more I started reading biology and cancer pathways, we started visualizing how chip design and transistor semiconductor physics can meet with pathway biology. Crazy ideas. Again, not because we had deep-sighted intelligence, right? But we had the passion to say, can we bring these two areas together to solve such a big problem? So it started from there and then it mushroomed into something that completely changed my life.
[00:04:49] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: So it's interesting that when you want to do something good, right, and we really want to do something good for biology and medicine, somehow things align together to make your vision happen. And I think that was the transition that I did. The last part of that is, I could have just done modeling and simulation in biology and moved away. Right. And said, okay, I've done it. I was hit with my own serious health problems and challenges around that time that almost killed me. Not once, but twice. And I said, if I got my life back at least three times, Prakash, first in 2000 and then 2005 and 2007, right? I'm a cancer survivor. I said, that means my life has to be more purposeful than just being a, you know, a CEO of a company. What if I can do something dramatically in the healthcare space that can give back to society and make a difference in change? So I took advantage of the fact that I got knocked out nearly thrice and I wanted to convert that into something that can unleash things in me that I didn't know existed. These are the reasons why I moved from semiconductor to biotech.
[00:06:01] Prakash Mallya: What an incredible story. Wow. Yeah, it's an inspiration, what you did and what you are continuing to do. So, on Bugworks, right? First of all, I love the brand. It's such a cool brand, Bugworks, right? I, I started to research the company coming up for this conversation. The more I read, it's very, very interesting. The concept of antimicrobial resistance, right? It's an extremely difficult space, very complex as well. Yes. Why did you choose, or why did Bugworks choose to focus on that? What is the difficulty associated with it? And what do you feel could be the path forward?
[00:06:48] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Great, all great questions. So from semiconductors, I started, we started a company called Cellworks which is the precursor to where Bugworks came. Cellworks is still functioning, great company, that uses mathematical modeling, now AI and machine learning to help cancer patients identify medicines for tough cancer patients called personalized medicine. While I was in Cellworks, I started seeing the writing on the wall, waking up every morning to Economic Times and Times of India saying India is losing 2 lakh people, 50,000 children dying of infection, no new antibiotics, existing antibiotics are not working, bugs are becoming more evolved, resistant. Big pharmaceutical companies don't care about this space because it's not money-making.
[00:07:37] Prakash Mallya: And why is that so?
[00:07:37] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: It's very interesting. For your viewers, every other part of pharmaceutical industry, you innovate and then you want people to use your drug a lot so you can make money and obviously also help society. In anti-infective, you are dealing with a live organism which is constantly changing and adapting itself. How are you supposed to innovate and come out with a drug that will work for at least 10, 15, 20 years before the bug breaks the drug? That's one. Which means after spending 15 years and a couple hundred million dollars to do a drug, I have to come Prakash and tell him, please don't use my drug unless you absolutely need it. That patient in the ICU who's dying of bloodstream infection, no other antibiotic is working, use mine. So it's a phenomenal life-saving innovation, but the use cases become narrow. Compared to taking a cholesterol drug or a sugar drug where hundreds of millions use it all their life. So pharmaceutical industry says, my God. First of all, you're chasing a bug that is so smart, that has been around for millions of years when homo sapiens have only been around for 240,000 years. We are a very young species compared to these guys who have been there from the ice age. They're smart, smarter than us. After I crack the problem, I still fail as a company economically. So there are economic challenges, there are science challenges. And to date since the great Alexander Fleming found out antibiotics 100 years ago, in 1923, 100 and 1922, there's only been less than 10 classes of antibiotics. That's it, from penicillin till today.
[00:09:15] Prakash Mallya: I did not know that.
[00:09:16] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: And the last novel class of antibiotics, Prakash, and for your viewers, happened when I was born in 1964. So I feel honored to work in this space and our company has that opportunity of creating the first novel class of a broad antibiotic that can take out all bugs, from head to toe, as I call it, from meningitis to throat issue to lung issues to abdominal issues to skin issues to to bioterrorism, etc. To have a broad spectrum antibiotic, Prakash, is very hard. So I feel honored that we have the ability to work on it. So Bugworks is working on a new class of antibiotics not seen in 60 years. That's three generations. That's the opportunity in front of us. We did Bugworks because as I told you, we lose several million people per year to unsolvable infections because we as a common public, dear friends, abuse antibiotics, particularly in countries like India where it's easily available. You use and abuse it. You have three bullets left in your pocket and you show your bullet to the enemy. The enemy is going to figure out ways of adjusting to that bullet. This is what is happening. Drug resistance spreads. The technical term for that is antimicrobial resistance, or AMR. And we are now in clinical trials. I hope we succeed. It's always very tough. It's like climbing a mountain like Everest with no oxygen as I say, uh, but that's what we are working on. Novel class of antibiotics. IV, serious hospital infections, and also oral tablet available for many parts of the world that may not have access to IV. My most exciting part of all of this is our innovation from India can go all over the world. It's not done just because I want to sell my company to a U.S. pharmaceutical company. The WHO, through a group in the WHO, have invested in our company. And have taken license for 140 of the low to medium income countries. So when we succeed, Prakash, we will not just launch it in the West, but at the same time, it will be launched all over the world.
[00:11:26] Prakash Mallya: Everywhere.
[00:11:26] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: So I honestly wake up and go to sleep with the world map in my house thinking how, how lucky I am that the work that we are doing, if it succeeds, is going to go all over this map. And that is the most gratifying feeling for me that drives me despite it being a very, very tough task.
[00:11:48] Prakash Mallya: You're talking about purpose at the start of it. Can't be a better purpose.
[00:11:53] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: So you are so right. That's my purpose. And my calling.
[00:11:56] Prakash Mallya: Wonderful. Wonderful. You know, the antimicrobial space overall and drug research in general is very, very difficult, right? So it's like, I was reading some of the conversations you've had in the past, 5% success rate, even in Indian cost terms, it would be 150 million or so for an average drug. So with all of these difficulties, what is the difference in the scientific approach Bugworks is taking versus everything else in the industry that gives you a unique position to succeed?
[00:12:34] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Great question. A bunch of things. Drug discovery is extremely tough. It is a game of snakes and ladders. You get a few ladders and then you hit a snake and you go down and you have to restart, which is what we are struggling also through. It's a 100, 200 million dollars, 10 to 15 years. Therefore, the antibiotic space, there is no pipeline in the world. We got some funding from the United States government and Indian government and private investors who believed in my team. I can't take any credit for the scientific prowess of Bugworks. We were very fortunate, Prakash, that, you know, in a strange way, that when I wanted to do an antibiotic company, AstraZeneca, who had a fabulous infection team, closed its operation in India, right? Because they decided that oncology is a better area. That talent pool became part of my founding talent pool. They are phenomenal scientists. 25, 30 years working on malaria, tuberculosis, and now working on hospital infections, right? So I got a good talent base to work. We said, to your question, if we did the same thing that everybody else has done and expect that because we are doing it, we're going to succeed, it won't happen. Let's take a different approach. So the team came together and used some amazing thinking around microbiology, medicinal chemistry, modeling and simulation to figure out new interesting ways of entering the bug and staying in the bug. You have compounds that can enter the bug, but the bug has got pumps that turn on, and these pumps can kick the antibiotic out. That's called e-flux pumps. My amazing scientists, all credit to them, none to me, figured out new chemistry that makes these compounds sort of invisible to the pump. So you get into the, get into the enemy's house. The lights are off in the enemy's house, so the enemy can't see me and then I puncture the enemy. And they were able to hit two targets inside the bacteria. It's like hitting the enemy in the head and the heart. So it's too much of a shock for the organism for it to want to be able to say I'm going to figure out ways of defending myself. So the kill is very sharp. And because we hit two targets, you puncture the bacteria. And luckily for us, Prakash, that's where some, some alchemy helped us. The same two places I hit are available across all types of bacteria. So that is where I'm getting a broad spectrum impact. Whether it is health care or bioterrorism pathogens, if these are nasty bacteria with those two targets, we get them all. So we become a one-stop shop. That became the difference between us and others. Two, doing this work in India, far more affordable than doing it in Boston. And the microbiologists and the drug discovery people I work with here are as good as the best in the world. Three, I didn't have to build an ecosystem in Bangalore. Go Bangalore. The type of incubators and accelerators that we have here, the one we sit in is called C-CAMP, Center for Cellular and Molecular Platforms. It's based in NCBS, National Center for Biological Sciences gave us a great facility. So I didn't have to build a facility overnight, right? So local infrastructure, talent pool, and last but not the least, the worst bugs in the world are in my backyard here. Right? So if you're able to figure out ways of killing the worst multidrug resistant bacteria in India, that solution works for the world. In anti-infective, we say what works in India will buy and large will work for the rest of the world. These are our differentiators. And truly last point is many companies who have tried and failed recently have failed because they want to launch in the West. The cost of doing clinical trials is super expensive and market conditions are not favorable for revenue. Low to medium income countries is where the problem is. Ladies and gentlemen, India loses 4 lakh people per year. Year on year. My people need it. My doctors are most willing to adopt a new antibiotic because they need it. So why go and try to solve an unsolved, why you go try to think you're solving a problem that's very small in the West and much bigger in our backyard. So your markets have to be here. Your tough testing has to be here. So it's a confluence of all of this coming together and the WHO has now made AMR Prakash as the top three problems in the globe.
[00:17:19] Prakash Mallya: Oh. I did not know this.
[00:17:21] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Yes. Top three problems because it can wipe out 10 million, 15 million people and it's the basic edifice of modern medicine. Imagine anybody in your family or my family, go to Manipal hospital or go for a surgery, you're hoping they'll come out alive without any infection. Correct. Because you're hoping that post-surgery, no infection will happen or if infection happens, that antibiotic will work.What if the antibiotic didn't work?
[00:17:45] Prakash Mallya: Doesn't work.
[00:17:45] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: As it is happening in many, many, many places now. Operation successful, patient gone. So these are all the reasons where anti-infectives have come out to the forefront. India can become not only the noisy problem area of the world but a solution provider for the world.
[00:18:04] Prakash Mallya: Very cool. And fast forward a few years, what could be the long-term vision for Bugworks?
[00:18:10] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: The long-term vision for Bugworks, excellent point is two things. One is our phase one clinical trial where we got hit with the problem and lost two years. We hit the snake in number 96 and went down and now we are working our way up. We complete phase one next year, we'll come to India to do our phase two and three. My vision, our vision for our company is this product can be launched in the West and countries like India at the same time. Amazing. Our people need it. Our doctors call on us. We get calls every month for our products which are not ready today. So there is a vision here to take this product all over the world. Partner with the group in WHO that will take it to the low to medium income countries - 146. We want to launch in India. Okay. And you know, we, we make jokes that we want to have the word India and Bangalore, I-N-B-A, Inba, in our product when it comes out. In Inbam, in Tamil, which is my mother tongue, means, you know, happiness, Inbam and peace. So there is an opportunity truly to do deep science work that will go to 8.3 billion people around the world. That doesn't happen every other day. Yeah. Therein lies our excitement.
[00:19:20] Prakash Mallya: Inba. Okay. So cool. That one, those four words will be there in the name of the product when it comes out. And what's the timeframe you are thinking?
[00:19:35] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Great question. Normally it would have been six, seven years. It's like very tough. But now because we are desperate for new medicines in many parts of the world, including India, Southeast Asia, Africa, even in the West, accelerated timelines are there. Next year when we complete our phase one, after phase one in three years, we'll be able to launch this product. Either through compassionate use or regular use. The world waits for this product. But I stay humbled by the enormity of taking this to completion and by the snakes and ladders game that, you know, if you're lucky, you will always only hit ladders. We've already hit one snake, as I said. So that just keeps you grounded, but doesn't deter you from that overarching vision that drives us.
[00:20:25] Prakash Mallya: So, all that you mentioned in terms of path you've taken on scientific approach, despite that, are the bacteria there, do they have the wherewithal to counter for resistance?
[00:20:43] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Beautiful question. For you and your audience, right? Alexander Fleming found 1922 and he, he won the Nobel Prize, right? For penicillin. And in his Nobel Prize speech, instead of saying, 'I'm great, I did good work,' he said, 'I'm already worried.' So the audience was like, 'Wow, why are you worried?' Because by the time my lifetime is over, my drug would have been beaten by the bug. Bug will always beat the drug. So it's only a matter of time before changes happen. Unfortunately, if India kind of countries continue to use and abuse antibiotics like buying candy in a shop, we are the ones who, and our children and our, our grandchildren and ourselves, will face huge problems. So a major societal change is slowly happening now. States like Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, you can't just go into a pharma store and say, 'Give me the latest antibiotic.'
[00:21:35] Prakash Mallya: Oh, is that so?
[00:21:36] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: It is great. Kerala to the fore, right? In the WHO meetings, they look at Kerala and they're calling it the Kerala model. Just like Gujarat model for development, they say Kerala model for antibiotics. That says that you use it responsibly. And immediately the drug resistance rates drops.
[00:21:53] Prakash Mallya: Yeah. That's true.
[00:21:55] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: If you don't use and you don't abuse it, the bug doesn't get to see it. Yeah. that often, so it can't change itself. So our product when it comes out will also get beaten by the bacteria, but because these rules are changing all over the world, thankfully even in India, and because we are hitting the bacteria in two places, Prakash and we've done simulations to where even if the bug gets smart and takes out one target, the other target will get it. So it's going to take it 35 to 40 years before it's going to defeat Bugworks' product. And we will give humanity two generations. That's, that will be our contribution.
[00:22:33] Prakash Mallya: In fact, a lot of it, I feel, is education in terms of not using antibiotics. And, I'm guilty of it myself, right? I mean, all of us. We take antibiotics way more than is needed. If people understand what is at stake,
[00:22:45] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: I'd like to make, if you don't mind me sharing this to all your audience, right? Particularly in India, 60-70, 60 to 70% of infections that we get and our family gets are viral, not bacterial.
[00:22:55] Prakash Mallya: That is very interesting. Okay, viral.
[00:23:01] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Which means if I just rest it out for four days, stay at home, take Dolo 650, stay hydrated, you'll be fine.
[00:23:09] Prakash Mallya: I'll be fine.
[00:23:09] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Instead of that, we go running to the clinic and tell the doctor, 'Doctor, doctor, give me antibiotics,' or worse, somebody in the family says, 'I have extra Azithromycin, please try it.' It's the worst social habit we have. We've destroyed all our antibiotics, which is why every year I say, totally we're losing four to five lakh people. It's like having a COVID continuing on. Except we don't talk about it. Because it's a silent killer. COVID was this big wave that came and went, right? So we said COVID. I mean, you know, here, every year, 50 people here, 100 people here, 150 people here, finally, when it comes to my own family, I could have the same problem. Yeah. So our behaviors need to change. Antibiotics is the last resort of the entire medical edifice. And that edifice is crumbling. You could have the best robotics, best surgeon, best laser, and yet post-surgery get an infection, or deliver a baby who picks up an infection and she cannot be saved.
[00:24:10] Prakash Mallya: No. That's very sad. Yeah, I would agree. So, switching gears, you recently got an award by Forbes, right? As an innovator. And when you were receiving the award, you talked about, to quote you, 'India does not celebrate science as much as it should.' But you still started Bugworks in India. You talked everything that you and your team has achieved. What has been the specific challenges you faced or continuing to face as you build a really cutting-edge deep-tech research, drug research company out of India?
[00:24:52] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Yeah, this is a very beautiful question that involves science, it involves socioeconomics. First of all, as a country, we spend 0.7% of our GDP, 0.7% of our GDP towards R&D. Extremely poor for R&D.
[00:25:11] Prakash Mallya: And why do you think?
[00:25:12] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: I think, I'll be honest, you know, we are, we are a young country. We've done brilliantly well. We are only 75 years old. That's all. Since independence, right? So, so we have to look at it in two ways. So, survival and coming out of that colonialist regime itself has taken us this much time, right? So, as long as if we got a government job in my father's generation, we were happy. Then that moved to from government jobs, as long as I got a private job and I got settled, it was fine. Then one half a generation before us or our generation said, 'IT services, I'm fine.' Now, New India is looking at space technology, you know, semiconductors, AI, biotech, EV, etc, etc. This is happening now. It has taken us this much time to come here. But our forefathers did brilliant thing for India, except a couple of things we didn't get it right. Amount we spend on healthcare is extremely low for a country of 1.4 billion. We're less than 2% of GDP. We need to be at 6%. The amount we spend for R&D, your question, is 0.7%. So, our DNA, we just came out of that difficult colonialist time and we, we are kicking ass now, but we lost out some years. Low investment in R&D. Investor mentality in India, and I don't blame them because the DNA is like that, is services-oriented, or today if I can do an app that delivers a pizza faster to you and I have eyeballs on that app, it's easier for me to get funded on that. Nothing wrong with that. That's also a nice, I'd like to get a pizza faster in my house. So I'm not denigrating it. But R&D spend is very low in our country. There is no patient capital. It is hard to do. But I decided to do here, one, because we thought, 'What looks like a huge problem, can we convert it into an opportunity?' What if we are one of the first five or six folks who get an opportunity to make mistakes, fall down, get up, fall down, get up, but do pioneering work and create pathways that my next generation will take my work and do it 100 times better? That's how science progresses. My late father used to always tell me, right? He was a famous doctor who practiced for 52 years, Dr. J. R. Sankaran, from Madras Medical College, he attended on India's first AIDS patient. Okay? He told me, when I told him I don't want to do Bugworks because it's so tough. Why should I solve the world's problem? And he said, 'If you crack antibiotics or oncology, your work will go to 8 billion people around the world.' Who don't know you exist. But you can feel proud that you came to this world and did something that has the impact, right? Those people don't know you exist. Which is wonderful. And he said, 'When you're done with your science, all you would have done is you would have laid one or two bricks on the wall of humanity.' You don't know how that wall of humanity is going to go. How deep, how wide, where it's going to go, but it's going to go with or without me. What if I can lay one brick on that wall? Those were some of the motivations, personal inspirations that we did it. But your second half of your question is, what are the challenges? The challenges are there is simply no funding ecosystem for deep science. The funding that we got from the Indian government and I thank the Indian government, they've done a good job at the base level. 50 lakhs, 1 crore.
[00:28:01] Prakash Mallya: Smaller ticket size.
[00:28:02] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Smaller ticket size. Exactly. That didn't even exist. So we have to appreciate that 5 to 6,000 biotech companies have formed in the last 10, 15 years, which didn't exist before, Prakash. That's great. 98% will fail. That's okay. 2% from them will come out and become the Biocons of the world and change the world. So, we have done a good job at the base level. We've done a good job of creating basic accelerators and incubators like where I stay. But after that, the next orbit is non-existent. If I have to raise 5 million or 10 million, those are small numbers in Boston and Bay Area and Seattle and London. You will not find investors easily here. You have to beg and borrow and plead and it's tough. I've aged just trying to raise money in India to do this. If we don't have that purpose and passion that keeps driving you, it's easy to give up and say I'll go do other things.
[00:28:50] Prakash Mallya: And in one of the conversations you mentioned, out of 200 dialogues you have, one or two succeed.
[00:28:56] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Yeah, about 250 now. So I have failed more than I've succeeded. And you know, these are things that truly keep us grounded that people who have slapped us and said, 'Don't do this, you're wasting your time. You don't need to solve the world's problem,' or 'Will I get a return in three years?' Very fair questions. It's his or her money. They have the right to ask that question. It's just that you don't have that ecosystem. You know, it's so interesting, it's finally, you know, the ones who put money in me finally do it because they believe in the team and they believe that we have to solve our own problems. When you strike a chord with someone who understands that nobody's going to come to India and solve my problem. I'm the diabetes capital of the world, infection capital of the world, oncology capital of the world. Yeah. I need to find my own solutions. That's the Viksit Bharat that we talk about, self-sustenance. If I don't have self-sustenance in health care, everything else collapses.
[00:29:51] Prakash Mallya: That's very true.
[00:29:52] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Last point I have is our regulatory environment is still one generation behind the United States and China. So lack of funding and the regulatory speed in New Delhi, these are the two biggest impediments in moving our deep science engine forward, whether it's space, whether it's EV, whether it's biotech.
[00:30:17] Prakash Mallya: Okay. That's a fantastic summary. And before we venture into the space of what could be the potential for India, let me do a lightning round with you, where I could ask you a set of fun questions so that audience come to know a little more about Dr. Anand as well as Anand. Lab bench or boardroom, which energizes you more right now?
[00:30:45] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: I'm so sorry. Neither. It's the hallway. It's the conversations in the hallway that energize me the most.
[00:30:52] Prakash Mallya: Okay. Biotech timelines or chip design timelines, which industry requires more patience, you think?
[00:31:01] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Biotech, much more than chip design. Chip design works on physics. Biotech works on biology. Many more unknown unknowns in biology.
[00:31:12] Prakash Mallya: Unknown unknowns.
[00:31:13] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Therefore, the timelines are always more in biotech.
[00:31:15] Prakash Mallya: Yeah. Yeah. Bug you fear the most, no pun intended.
[00:31:21] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: It's not a bug. It's a word called complacency. That's the bug I fear the most.
[00:31:30] Prakash Mallya: Yeah.
[00:31:31] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Because that complacency in everything we do, I, I always tell my children that we can solve the bugs, the bacterial and viral bugs, but that complacency, that human bug, that's the one I worry about the most.
[00:31:44] Prakash Mallya: Agree. Yeah. Chai or chips, which brainstorming, while brainstorming the next molecule?
[00:31:54] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Chai.
[00:31:55] Prakash Mallya: Okay.
[00:31:55] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Because I need that caffeine. You need to have this rush going. I love chips, but that rush of energy is your chai. So I'll choose your chai for my next big thinking.
[00:32:06] Prakash Mallya: Okay. Thank you. The biggest challenge that biotech startups specifically in India face.
[00:32:13] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Sorry, it's a coin, two sides of the coin. The challenges are going to be to be able to de-risk the capital requirement for the company is the biggest challenge, closely followed and coupled with the fact that our regulatory environment and paradigms are lagging. So, it's a coin, as an answer, the two sides of the coin are capital de-riskification. and regulatory paradigm not keeping up with the speed that's required.
[00:32:41] Prakash Mallya: Okay. And last question, what's the one thing you wish more people understood when it comes to inventing new drugs or medicines?
[00:32:51] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: That's a very profound question. Most people should understand that if their family is safe today and they are safe today, it's because there's good medicines. True. Somebody has worked 20, 30 years of doing science and you don't know who they are. But somebody somewhere around the world, including India, has toiled to make your family safe. Whether it's your food, the environment, the air we breathe, or health care, all of them require deep science and deep research and drug discovery is on the health side. If as a nation, we don't make scientific discovery part of our consciousness, we will always remain to be a services-oriented country, that people need to understand. Again, nothing wrong with services, look what it has done to our country. Transformed our country. But moving forward to become that Viksit Bharat, people need to understand that if we don’t solve our healthcare issues with our own inventions and stay focused and invent our science, we will be left far behind. We will be 1.7B but sick population.
[00:34:22] Prakash Mallya: That's true. Well said. Lets come back to our conversation on superbugs, Bugworks and much more. So, you talked about it, right? And we saw it during Covid as well. India is such a powerhouse when it comes to drug manufacturing. I think its fast becoming a manufacturer for the whole world if not already. The other part is drug research where we don’t do enough exactly to your point. So what do you believe is the potential for drug research coming out of India that can solve world problems like the ones you mentioned and beyond.
[00:35:02] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: This is the most exciting question of the lot as its so forward-looking and so real. We have done a great job in manufacturing and we have to appreciate that. There is innovation in manufacturing too to figure out cheaper, faster routes is innovation in India. We started as generic companies right? That’s why we can get Dolo 650 or Crocin I can get cheaply. The whole world depends on Indian generic drugs because they are good quality and they are affordable. You and I have lived in United States. If you walk into Walgreens or CVS, I always look at where its manufactured. In most cases, it’ll be India if its over the counter because India is very strong. And we showed the world, ladies and gentlemen during vaccines that we care for the world. If we didn’t have Bharat Biotech, SERUM Institute of India etc, many parts of the world would not have gotten vaccines. The vaccines of the West don’t work for the rest of the world because you need a cold chain. How can I get a mRNA vaccine in some godforsaken interior Karnataka or Tamilnadu place where you say, ‘please keep it at minus 8 degrees.’ They wouldn’t even know what minus eight degrees mean. Therefore we were able to invent stuff that was affordable and can work in hot tropical climates around the world. We saved the world and our people. That’s why manufacturing is very important. But moving forward the value chain in stunted if we stay only in manufacturing. Value chain is always for the person who does the discovery and development because they cream it and the West has been creaming that. With all the fantastic manufacturing potential we have, with the changing biotech infrastructure thanks to government involvement, with the hopefully changing regulatory paradigm, we are actually perfectly set to get into drug discovery. There is good talent. Believe it or not, lots of good talent is coming from United States, Indian-Americans want to come back. This actually the perfect time. For China, its phenomenal. 20,000 Chinese scientists came back in the last 3-4 years back to China from US. Maybe there is an opportunity for reverse brain drain. So we get some senior talent pool coming in who come from drug discovery background and use the manufacturing prowess of India. The last point there the most important point is there is something that’s levelling the playing field between the West and East. It’s called artificial intelligence. AI is completely changing the way how even drug discovery is done.
[00:37:44] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Therefore when you used to say, ‘let me wait for something to come from America, it’s going to take 20 years to come or 30 years to come. In terms of competency today its happening in a matter of months. I’m telling you this ladies and gentlemen for your audience, if drug discovery is 100% and AI is used 10% today and 90% the rest, in a matter of two years, it may be 80:20. 80% of the drug value chain in two years could be influenced by Artificial Intelligence only 20% may sit in conventional areas. If I am even approximately correct, with the power we have in India – smart technology people we have, the next generation that’s raring to go, who have grown up on ChatGPT already in the past 2 to 3 years, they don’t think like us. So the playing field is going to be levelled.
[00:38:39] Prakash Mallya: Because of talent.
[00:38:42] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Because of talent they’re ready to take risk, they don’t even need degrees as long as they know the skill. So if you have a team of 40 people, if I had six to eight drug discovery people who bring drug discovery skills and the rest can be tech biologists not biotech. I am going to call it tech bio. These companies in India are going to flip and become tech bio companies. Tech bio is going to make the playing field levelled. So I actually think this is a great time for India. With all its manufacturing background with new technologies coming in, this is a fabulous time as long as we can solve the funding gap and the regulation gap.
[00:39:22] Prakash Mallya: So you talked about the R&D, the state of R&D and what could be done. Talked about talent, incredible talent we have. You talked about patient capital. Those are essential elements for making the vision that you talked about happen. And of course government policy. So are there any steps you believe India can take in those areas. And even beyond like you talked about the ecosystem in Bangalore. You are doing a pilot along with CyteCare in oncology space. It’s a fantastic example of industry collaboration. But from a policymaking, talent, R&D, patient capital are there concrete steps we can take to make it better?
[00:40:08] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Yes. Very, again, very multi-faceted question. The government, particularly Department of Biotechnology, has been phenomenal in the last 10 to 15 years. Phenomenal given all the constraints of operating within government. As I told you, there are more than 6,000 biotech companies now, and even if a small percentage of them succeed, we have found problems for our khana, we have found problems for our hawa, and we have found problems for our health. Okay. These incubators and accelerators for biotech innovation are coming up in 45 to 50 parts of the country right now. When I started, it was in three parts.
[00:40:44] Prakash Mallya: Oh, wow.
[00:40:45] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: So, 45 centers of excellence like C-CAMP, like Bangalore cluster across the country.
[00:40:51] Prakash Mallya: And who is building them?
[00:40:53] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: It's usually public-private partnership kind of a thing. There will be a Tata Foundation plus the government or local industry plus government. But the government of Karnataka, of course, is a leader. That is why you find such a large percentage of startups in, in Karnataka. And which is amazing. And then there is Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, but Karnataka is there is no comparison. It's a distant second after it. So these incubators and accelerators are happening all over the country is a major change. The question you asked is fantastic. If we don't, and we have to be humble about something. While we are proud of India, sometimes we posture more than we deliver. The Chinese are way ahead of us in biotech. I'm sorry to say, they're about 10 years ahead of us. And I will not be exaggerating if I told you, in some areas, they are ahead of the United States. Just because you and I are not aware of it, doesn't mean it's not happening.
[00:41:53] Prakash Mallya: It does not happen. Yeah.
[00:41:56] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Whether it's EV or semiconductor, biotech, the biggest deals in biotech are not happening in Boston and Cambridge. They're happening in Shanghai and Beijing.
[00:42:00] Prakash Mallya: And why is that so?
[00:42:02] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: It's because they are innovating at speeds unknown to man. 20,000 plus talent has moved from United States and UK, ghar wapsi. Government is spending lots of billions of dollars into R&D research because they know R&D requires government support before private people come. When government is spending billions of dollars, private industry then comes into collaborates as public-private partnering. That blueprint, you don't need to take it 100% because I know China is different, India is different. We are a proud nation, you know, we are Viksit Bharat, but there are some lessons. Maybe government instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars needs to invest much more. So whether it's semiconductor or, you know, EV or biotech, this is our opportunity. The next five years, if as a nation, we don't put deep money as a government and private, public-private, so it's not only the government's problem, we would lose out. Then we're going to continue doing outsourced work for others. Nothing wrong. We'll continue doing services, nothing wrong, but the value in all of the IP will be outside of the country.
[00:43:10] Prakash Mallya: Yeah. Agree.
[00:43:13] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: So I hope the government, by the way, we should be so appreciative, just two weeks ago, Prakash, three weeks, government announced a 1 lakh crore fund.
[00:43:21] Prakash Mallya: Correct.
[00:43:23] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Phenomenal. Now, will there be complexities in how it's implemented? You bet. But we should, you know, be appreciative that they have woken up. The government is very forward-looking. 1 lakh crore is a significant amount. When we used to cry for 50 lakhs. If this is properly implemented, Yeah. and they take inputs from industry along with academia. That's the mistake we make. We have only academics driving all these government committees. What you need, government, industry, industry coming in. You know why NIH became what it's become, right? Why did NSF in the United States become what it's become? They have great people from industry, academia, government that that triumvirate, yes, coming together. That is lacking. You know, nothing wrong with academics, but you need academia, industry, government and government coming together to make policy. I'm very encouraged by this 1 lakh crore fund. That's something that didn't happen before now. Let's hope that that spawns off a fantastic cascade. That makes us invest in science and solve problems for our children and our grandchildren's generation from here. Otherwise, you're going to continue importing, paying big money, complaining why is this cancer medicine costing so much? Why is this infection medicine costing so much? Wait for it to become generic. Then my people make it and it's available for me. I want it today. And I want it to be affordable today. For that, I have to innovate. As they say, you have to innovate your way out of problems.
[00:44:54] Prakash Mallya: True. And one nuance I would love your opinion on is you talked about R&D and the collaboration requirement and the percentage of R&D spend being low in India, which is completely true. But the nuance behind that is the private sector investment on R&D is lower than government.
[00:45:09] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Wow. That is so true, right? And I, I know I was remiss in not mentioning this. I'm always asked by investors, why do you guys not have exits in India? We hear about Bugworks, but how many biotech companies have had investments from big Indian pharma companies? I'll sit mum. How many biotech companies, whether it's devices, diagnostics, drug discovery, have had exits licensing deals from big pharma companies? How many biotechs have had full M&A acquisition by your famed manufacturing industry? Almost none. There'll be one or two here and there which is hard to find. This is the backdrop we have. You're right. We spend so much time talking about what the government needs to do, but we need to talk about the private sector. You are so right. And the private sector's investment in its own R&D is low. Therefore, the money it has to invest in other small companies and partner with them and acquire them is even smaller, which is why the VCs are not coming. I'll be honest, when I, because I talk to VCs all over the world, we say, why are you not coming to India? India is the best story. They never blame government for lack of investment. They blame government only for regulation. Because they don't think it's a government's problem to fix all your funding problems. It's true. They say, hey, your private industry seems quite happy making their profits and to their shareholders. But the last five years, that is also changing. The big companies are now investing in their own R&D and we hear them making some noise just last week, Prakash. I'll finish my statement with that. One of the Indian companies called Glenmark, Glenmark Pharma, Mumbai based did a deal in oncology for innovation - 700 million dollars upfront for innovation plus milestones. It made all of us sit up and say, ‘yes’, looks like innovation is also starting to come from our companies. Hopefully, we'll be able to partner with such large companies. So, these are all green shoots.Green shoots in our R&D.
[00:47:20] Prakash Mallya: Yeah. Wonderful. So you said something about AI as you were talking about what could shift. And I would agree with you there is a lot of intersection between science and technology that can be driven out of AI. So what potentially do you see are the intersects between biology and technologies or computational technology that can be beneficial? You said it it's going to switch completely to 80-20 instead of 20-80 today.
[00:47:50] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Yes, yes, yes.
[00:47:53] Prakash Mallya: So are there things that you feel India as a country could pay attention to? The steps we could take to really get ahead or leapfrog, Yes. in terms of drug research.
[00:47:59] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Wow. Very forward-looking question. I appreciate that. So, I want to step back. When I started my semiconductor and you come from the semiconductor background, early '90s started working in the U.S. I was lucky that from day one of my job as a chip designer in a company called Hughes, Hughes Aircraft company, I was asked to start looking at using modern methods for chip design. All the designers who had been working for 20, 30 years before me are like, 'You're doing transistor design by hand. We're handcrafting it and creating a semiconductor. You're going to come and write a program that's going to build a counter or you're going to write a program that's going to build pieces of the microcontroller.' And I jumped straight into it. And within three years, that group became almost entirely using high-level languages like Verilog, VHDL, etc. And now semiconductor has moved much higher into AI. In drug discovery, it's even harder. The people you work with are all PhDs, postdocs, double PhD, double postdoc, who have spent their entire lives looking at one protein or one synthesis or one thing. Their rate of change is very slow. There is always a lot of friction to say, I know what I'm doing for 25, 30 years. How can AI come and do it? That has changed in the last 12 months. Because people are starting to see from Google to Meta to Nvidia, people are starting to say AI biology is going to be the biggest thing because it changes, like I said, it changes your oota, it changes your hawa, it changes your health. Three most important things for us.
[00:49:33] Prakash Mallya: That's true.
[00:49:35] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: The air you breathe, the food you eat, and the health of you and your family. Correct?
[00:49:38] Prakash Mallya: Well summarized.
[00:49:40] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Nothing can be more important. EV is nice, but it comes next. Right? Mobility comes next.
[00:49:45] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: So, to your question, artificial intelligence has come up very quickly and is going exponentially. You know, thanks to Nvidia, thanks to large language models, you know, all of this stuff are happening. And Google has invested a lot into this space through what is called AlphaFold.
[00:50:01] Prakash Mallya: AlphaFold. Yeah.
[00:50:04] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: What used to take a year to hit an X-ray on a protein and get its crystal structure is happening in minutes. Because of learning. So structural biology, where you're looking at proteins and trying to find out their structure is the first place that's almost going entirely into AI. Once you have a structure of something, you need to figure out how a compound is going to come and connect and roll around with that structure. It's a tough problem to solve. That problem is also starting to get solved. You can visually see if your compound is connecting, how is it connecting, can I change the compound slightly, run simulations, blah, blah, blah, and garbage in, garbage out. You need to put good data in too.
[00:50:47] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: But 70% of drug discovery, Prakash, for you for your audience, the cost and the time is in clinical trials. That's the tough part. It's not all this beautiful discovery here. You go to clinical trials, something that worked in animal doesn't work in human for whatever reason.
[00:51:00] Prakash Mallya: Yeah. And it takes a long time as well.
[00:51:05] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Three, four, five, six, seven years, $100 million-$150 million, 7%-8% success rate. That's where the problem is, not in upstream discovery. There, AI is changing everything. The entire FDA database, European Medicines database, Indian CDSCO database has been studied by AI. So it knows all protocols ever done for any medicine. So it understands how to come up with the most optimal clinical trial protocol design. And by doing that can potentially allow adaptive clinical trials that you run on N number of patients. If you get this result, reduce the number of patients. If you get that result, increase the number of patients, adaptively it can come up with new protocols. And most importantly, prediction of whether your medicine will work in man. We are not yet there. That is going to completely change drug discovery. If I have predictive algorithms that says, if we get this kind of data on a dog or a mouse model, you're likely to have success in human who has this kind of background. That gap is being closed now. So that is why I'm saying in a couple of years, it's going to be 80-20. Is it going to replace drug discovery people? Absolutely not. That's a moot discussion. But with a group of 10, 15, 20 good drug discovery people, you add AI machine learning to it, it's going to do wonders. And any company that doesn't move that way, including mine, will become dinosaurs.
[00:52:37] Prakash Mallya: And what have you started to make the moves on in terms of new workflow, new research, new thoughts?
[00:52:42] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: My team is excellent. You know, I respect them. They had initial hesitancy because AI was much more hype than reality five years ago. Everybody's getting funded saying, you know, I can go to the moon tomorrow with AI, right? So, I appreciate them. They want to see data. Now that they're starting to see data, we see them incorporating a lot of tools in in simulating how my drug is going to behave in man. You know, the characteristics when you take a drug, it has to go, concentration rises, comes out, right? That's called ADME and pharmacokinetics, they've started looking at a lot of AI tools for that. They're looking at AI tools to customize clinical trial protocol design. They're looking at AI tools to look at how a molecule is coming and binding with the structure. I see that happening. And my previous company, Cellworks, we are collaborating with them and they are predicting which patients my oncology drug will work and why. And then we, our collaboration with CyteCare hospital that you mentioned, where we sit inside CyteCare hospital and we get patient sample, they use AI. So basically, after you get the patient sample, you put your drug on it to see what happens to that tumor sample and digital pathology takes a picture of it and does a study and tells us, 'Your drug is actually getting into the tumor and causing the tumor to shrink in size.' So this is a new world. Gone are the days that says, 'You cannot be in drug discovery if you don't have 15, 20 years experience doing structural biology or, you know, pharmacokinetics.' Still need that knowledge base. But AI is changing the playing field and I don't think we are late in adopting. I would have preferred us to have adopted something even faster five years ago, but I respect why my guys had a push back because it was so much hype. So initially, things start with hype and now it's leveled off into an exciting reality. Yeah. and you would see Bugworks making some announcements on AI in the years to come.
[00:54:40] Prakash Mallya: Look forward to it. So you have done a couple of startups in drug research, chip design before that. Your company is recognized across the world. What are one or two achievements or milestones you believe are very close to your heart and how did you come about doing that along with your team?
[00:55:06] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Right. Oh, yeah, past milestones, right? By the way, the milestone I'm looking forward to is a completion of our Phase one clinical trial.
[00:55:10] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: That should change everything. Because that will really put India on a on a world map. That we can do it, we're moving to Phase two, and people will take us very seriously. The milestones we've done, the very fact that we could put a drug discovery team in India when everyone said it's not doable, don't do it, get into manufacturing, nothing wrong with manufacturing, we still doing good work. And we went where no one else has gone is in itself a milestone. And I couldn't have gone there had it not been for all the investors who believed in us. They only believed in the people and the messaging. I don't have spreadsheets. Business pitch doesn't have spreadsheets. So that means they have to believe in the message, the messenger, and the message. And the team and invest in us. So I'm really, really, really thankful to all of them. And I'm thankful to my team. None left us because this kind of work they won't get anywhere else. So, the very fact that we have been able to put a company like this together was in itself a big victory. Second big milestone is to get the US government to invest in an Indian company via a grant called CARB-X. C-A-R-B X. It's a huge milestone. Without that, we couldn't be where we are. And the third milestone is having the WHO on the table partnering with us, which doesn't happen to small biotechs. To take your innovation all over the world and believe in us even when we are having problems. And the fourth and the large, last milestone is the ability to work with a hospital like CyteCare hospital and to forge a local partnership where we gain access to post-surgery tumor to test our products etc is quite unprecedented in India. It's not unprecedented in Cambridge, but here it is. So these few milestones, you know, I'm humbled about, but I'm really looking forward to waking up next year when our Phase one clinical trial is done, because then we will accelerate two and three and try to bring this product to man quickly.
[00:57:15] Prakash Mallya: Very, very cool. So you and when you founded Bugworks, you and your founders, co-founders were in your 50s and 60s at that time, right? That is in itself is an inspiration for everyone, including me. No question, right? So what are the things that a young innovator sitting out of India wanting to do like putting India on the map like the work you're doing here could learn from your journey through that path.
[00:57:45] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Right. Yeah, we are often asked this question and and I speak to college audiences as well. There is this notion among youngsters today that they can, five of them can get laptops, sit in Koramangala in a third-wave cafe and do startups and make money overnight. Thankfully, people are understanding that that's just, it's a fallacy. When they look at people in their 50s and 60s trying to solve big problems, I think I hope, I hope they will take inspiration that there are people watching out for us and our parents and our children by doing stuff that is so groundbreaking. That they could just retire. I'm 60 today. I could just simply retire and sing or do whatever it is that I like to do, philanthropy that I'm very passionate about. But I feel that, you know, I have a short life and I want to make my life count. I want these youngsters to know that they're growing up in a brilliant India that you and I didn't have. We left abroad because we thought US was everything. You know, and today US is a different topic for another chai and chips. But I want these youngsters to realize that they're growing up in a new India. That's waiting for 2047 when we are going to be a developed country. They have to contribute. They cannot ask what is India doing for me. As John F. Kennedy said, right? Ask not what the country does for you, but what you do for the country. If I can steal his quotation, I tell those youngsters, if somebody in their 40s and 50s are willing to dedicate the rest of their life in solving big problems that are going to impact that youngster's life when she or he is in their 40s, let's say diabetes or cardiovascular or infection, this is a great country to be in. That means people believe in our country. They're just not waiting for somebody else to solve my problem. And I'm waiting for the the western company to solve my problem. I want them to know that investment in science, solving our problems, and making your life count is the biggest lesson. There is no religious lesson, there is no nothing else that is of interest except saying, I have come. I am here. I’m in a beautiful country. You know that’s a pathbreaking country. What am I doing to make my life count? That’s the only thing I leave a youngster with because they’re a Whatsapp generation. They don’t have time for anything else. If they cant know that there’s a guy in his 60 who wants to till his last breath do work not because I’m interested in money or fame because all of those things are fallacies and transient. But I want to say I came into this world. What am I leaving this world with? Is it a better place than it was when I came? That's what is a question I want to leave them with.
[01:00:27] Prakash Mallya: Super. Super. So, you have done so much in your life, right? A lot of it you talked about, a lot more we haven't talked about. And one element of it is philanthropy. So, you have founded companies, your switch from chip design to semiconductors. You are such an inspiration, such a passionate spokesperson for drug research coming out of India, and you still find time for philanthropy. So, what is it about? What's your goal there? And if the audience can learn more about it, it would be wonderful.
[01:01:00] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: I'd like to first of all start by saying that by doing philanthropy, I have never helped anyone. I want to be very honest. It has made me a better person. So, if somebody is thinking that I want to do philanthropy because I want to help the world, it's a wrong way to go into it. I'll be I'll be very honest. We have to be very humble by the fact that opportunities are all around us. I grabbed those opportunities. I have never, you know, really, not that, oh, 10,000 people have benefited by what I have done. I have benefited by the philanthropic journey. I want to put that point out straight out there, right? So it has given more to me than I have given to it. Point number two, I came from a family, as I said, my dad practiced for 53 years, he changed medicine in Chennai. My brother's a famous doctor, Chennai. So I come from a family filled with doctors and philanthropists who always did work. It was there in my subconscious. The same health problem that I spoke about earlier in my thing, this is the other thing, right? Things that completely knock you off, you can either sit back and say, 'Oh, you know, why this is happening to me?' Or you can say, 'Wow, it happened to me and I was meant for something great.' No time for self-pity. So part of that no time for self-pity that I need to do things in a hurry was philanthropy and drug discovery. Drug discovery because it can go to millions and billions of people if your innovation is successful. Philanthropy because you can make a difference to 5, 10,000 people. So I want to get into philanthropy. A kind person introduced me to some good people in Chennai and I'm a co-founding trustee in CHILD for the last 19 years. And we take care of children who were initially abandoned by HIV parents. Because my father was the first doctor to attend on AIDS in India. Patient number one came to my house. So I was very proud of the fact that when nobody would touch an HIV patient with a pole, my dad risked his life. So I wanted to do something for HIV meaningful and I got this opportunity to help HIV orphans through CHILD. That has now mushroomed into something massive. We have girl children program,young boys program, residential school program.Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of children have gone through it. And just last year,we launched a vocational training program in CHILD for girls. Right? Someday I want to bring transgenders in because in our society, a transgender can be a prostitute or a beggar. Only two things possible. Prostitution, begging. So someday, I hope I can do something for transgenders, but right now it is for girls who come from very poor background, abandoned background, they're starting to learn AI. Giving them basic introduction to computers, introduction to Tally software in accounting, get them ready for skills. I don't care about degrees. In India, degree is waste.
[01:03:58] Prakash Mallya: Right.
[01:03:59] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Today's date. We have to think like the Europeans of the 1940s and 50s where a car mechanic is paid more than a doctor in Germany.
[01:04:02] Prakash Mallya: Trade skills are so much better.
[01:04:03] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Trade skills. If she comes and I can teach her accounting, I don't care if she got BA, BCom, MA, MCom. She has it, great, good for her if she wants to. But she's going to get a job because she gets a skill. So we're getting a skill development program. So CHILD is one thing. The second thing is along some kind-hearted friends in Bangalore, we started Humanist Foundation to help poor people who will not be able to afford oncology treatment. CyteCare Hospital had the heart. To say let us create it and almost free of cost to the patient. We've done about 500 patients so far, 510 or so. I hope it also mushrooms because of a great hospital like CyteCare came on the table. We came together. Friend of mine, Jogen and myself and Dr. Farzan, Ramu and others, and we did Humanist. The third philanthropy is a science philanthropy. Where science and philanthropy come together. In India, we don't fund science. We spend the last 50 minutes talking about it. A great group of scientists around India got together and said, 'Let's do an NGO called Ignite Life Sciences.' Where we will raise money from society and fund science privately in our country. Why does funding of science have to be only from government? Right. So now we are embarked that and we're funding many projects all over the country called Ignite Life Sciences. So that is the coalition, you know, coalescing scientific interest, philanthropic interest is coming together. Think about science as a philanthropy. If I invest in a next-generation vaccine for dengue, that's the biggest philanthropy you could do. If that particularly if that medicine is available to millions of my countrymen at affordable price, what bigger philanthropy can be there? So it took me age 60 to understand that science and philanthropy can coexist. So these are the reasons why I'm in philanthropy. And again, I'll finish with what I started. I have gained much, much, much more than I can ever give back.
[01:06:09] Prakash Mallya: Wow. And I have no words to describe what you're doing. But I have an honest question, Anand. You are doing so many different things. You're a founder, you're a cancer survivor, you're a philanthropist, you've done many other things. How do you find the time?
[01:06:28] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: I work with great people. And you know, I'll be very honest. I was a man of average intellect. I know my strengths, right? Above average intellect. But I always had the skill of identifying good people to work with, whether it was my school, Don Bosco School, Madras, or Guindy Engineering College, or friends in the US or friends in Bangalore. I work with people who are 10x smarter than me. And thankfully, I am able to appreciate that they are much smarter than me and learn from them. So in all of these things I spoke about, I'm only an igniter. I bring my passion, my energy, and I try to bring my pure intent and networks. The teams that I have in Cellworks, in Bugworks, in Ignite Life Sciences, in CHILD, in Humanist, everything that we do, the teams are delivering. You know, I just, they believe in me, I believe in them. It's as cliched as it sounds. If you surround yourself with people who are smarter than me, know that they are smarter than me. I want to learn from them always, so there is no ego. Man, you unleash some amazing things. If you can just set aside your stupid ego, you can unleash amazing things. I ask the most basic questions every day, Prakash. When I go to our labs in C-CAMP, I'm sure they think I'm an idiot sometimes. I have no problem. I'm going to remain a student all my life.
[01:07:54] Prakash Mallya: Wow. Yeah. It's very, very simple what you said, but so hard to do. Yeah from what you have achieved in life, even harder to do, I would say.
[01:08:08] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Yeah. I, I believe in that.
[01:08:11] Prakash Mallya: So last question that I ask all my guests is about just future forward India. So India's position in deep tech, including areas like drug research is not only about domestic consumption or domestic growth. It's putting India on the map, right? So if you fast forward a couple of decades, what is your vision of India's position on that global map from a deep tech perspective? And what steps could we take right now in order to achieve that vision?
[01:08:47] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Beautiful. First we have the vision so we stay positive, right? And then look at what we do. As we said, our governments are trying to do their very best, given the constraints we have. We are a complex country. 20 years from today, some of the top medicines of this world in areas like cancer, diabetes, aging, infection will come to the whole world from India. It's already going to happen. Because Indians believe in affordable innovation. West is expensive innovation. We don't have that kind of money. We will never have that kind of money and we don't need that kind of money. Even Bugworks, if we are successful, I want my product to go all over the world. I want India first because they are my people. It's my brothers and sisters, but I want this innovation to go all over the world. So somebody in Botswana or somebody in in Vienna, Virginia, will say, 'Wow, Indian innovation saved my life,' right? So we are already marching towards that and I think our affordable innovation plus our manufacturing capabilities, very hard for other countries to put our manufacturing capabilities like we have particularly in vaccines, childhood illnesses. Very strong, India is. The world needs India for, you know, diphtheria and smallpox and measles vaccines. So I see a 20-year, first of all, we'll be getting closer to Viksit Bharat. So your question beautifully comes to 2047. Our honorable prime minister wants India to be a truly developed country by 2047. Correct? So I'll start from there. To be a truly developed country, I need to be healthy. If I have problems. Because innately Indians, our genes make us more prone to cardiac issues, to diabetes issues, etc, etc. So we will be the country that lead the world in many aspects. We will never be number one. I think that is too much of patriotic fervor that is not backed up with data. We will be in the top two or three. With US, China and India, right. Lots to catch up with China, as I said. And I'll come to that in a second. So I see I see in 20 years from now with artificial intelligence, with the young population coming in, with clinical trials happening in India, affordable medicines in affordable innovation in India, so many incubators, accelerators in our country, so much of manufacturing, if only the regulatory piece also improves, which is only a matter of time, nothing to beat India. Then we'll be sitting 20 years from now and saying, we won't be just talking about manufacturing alone. Manufacturing will always be important, but we'll be talking about innovation in drug discovery also coming. But to get there, schemes like the government has announced the one lakh, one lakh crore scheme, should be properly implemented. Putting a scheme and getting it funded is one thing, having the right infrastructure and committees to drive it so the right people who are working on the most important problems get this money is a second problem. I hope we put enough emphasis on the second part. Hats off to the government to do what it does. Number one. Our regulatory paradigm again. And third, big pharmaceutical industries in India and the big agro industries in India have to step up their own investment in R&D. They have to develop the ecosystem. If as a small company, I've gone around the world to develop AMR ecosystem, the big companies can do a much better job than me because they have more resources, more people, more experience. Why are they not investing in small companies? Why are they not coming and acquiring small companies? Why aren't licensing deals happening in India? So it's not just for the government to solve this problem. The industry also has to wake up to do it. And last but not least, we have to be very careful about how we integrate AI into biology and data because this involves a lot of confidential data. I think a country like India where we lack discipline, we are just an indisciplined bunch. We are a smart bunch, hardworking bunch, great culture, great history, but we are absolutely indisciplined. Which is why the British, 50,000 British took over 50 crore Indians because of our inherent indiscipline. AI will expose that indiscipline in ways that we can't even begin to fathom. All of our data could be available everywhere. All the governance around AI infrastructures, we need to get that right. So that concerns me and that is going to become a central theme, whether it's Agrotech, EV-tech, semiconductor tech, biotech, space tech. The common theme is going to become data integrity, data fidelity. We need to spend much more time on it. So I dream of a 20-year thing where many of the diseases that plague hundreds of millions of people, not just in India, but all over the world, solutions will come from India. The West cannot solve the world's problems. We will.
[01:13:47] Prakash Mallya: That's a fantastic articulation on what we can do together.
[01:13:51] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Together.
[01:13:53] Prakash Mallya: Yeah. So, we covered so much ground, Anand. Is there anything you wanted to cover that we didn't?
[01:13:58] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: I think you've, you've covered everything. It's just that I, I just want to leave your audience and and you to know that my comments are not purely coming from nationalistic, patriotic fervor. Because that will die down as soon as you walk out. It's rooted in what I see is happening, right? And I feel very fortunate that I got an opportunity to work in two very different areas. Semiconductors and biotechnology. And whatever little milestones or success I've gotten in life are because of ability to adapt. So I want youngsters listening to you to know that while there is all this LLM and AI and everything, learn one or two areas deeply. My biggest worry is now we are going to become a flitting generation. You go quickly into chat GPT, you find your answer or perplexity or whatever. You're not getting deep into anything. Take one area at least and get in-depth knowledge and be open to adaptation. And I want to leave that 20-year-old or 30-year-old watching this, if a 60-year-old can wake up every day feeling that he knows nothing, because I do know nothing, I know very little. Wants to learn and I find that AI tools are allowing me to learn new things, not just making my life easier. Big difference. AI tools making my life easier, good for all of us, but it needs to allow me to study, learn more also in depth. So that adaptability, adaptation and the thirst for knowledge is the only way we will succeed and this country will succeed.
[01:15:35] Prakash Mallya: Couldn't be a better way to close our conversation, Anand. So, thank you very much for coming.
[01:15:41] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Thank you so very much. You've done so much work. I can see it really.
[01:15:46] Prakash Mallya: Amazing, amazing conversation. You are an absolute inspiration. I'm sure for everyone listening to it would be as well. And look forward to all the success for Bugworks and your entire team that is working so hard and continuing to work so hard on the Phase One trials.
[01:16:02] Dr. Anand Anandkumar: Thank you so much. I love the Chai Chips format. And thank you, guys.
[01:16:07] Prakash Mallya: Yeah. So, for everyone listening in, please tune into any channel that you listen to our podcast or watch our podcast. Please give us feedback on how I can do better and what more or what different things you would like to listen to. Thank you.
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