Indegene to bolster biotech, medical offerings with Medical Marketing Economics buy

Technology-enabled healthcare solutions provider Indegene has acquired US-based Medical Marketing Economics LLC (MME) for about $10 million to power its emerging biotech and medical offerings.

Medical Marketing Economics is a healthcare market access and pricing strategy firm.  

This is the Bengaluru-based company’s first acquisition after it raised $200 million from US-based investment firms Carlyle Group and Brighton Park Capital earlier this year, to boost acquisitions and drive global expansion plans.  

“Our growth momentum is strong, and acquisitions will continue to be a priority area for us,” Manish Gupta, cofounder and chief executive officer, Indegene told Mint in an interview. 

Acquisitions have always been a key part of Indegene’s growth strategy. The company made seven strategic global acquisitions between 2012 and 2019. Prior to MME, it acquired UK-based DT Associates, a digital transformation and customer experience consulting firm, in 2019.   

Post the funding, Indegene had said it will continue to make strategic acquisitions in the coming months to build deep domain expertise and differentiated technology to accelerate growth. “Our target acquisition companies will be anywhere in the $5 million to $100 million revenue range," Gupta said in an earlier interview. 

As part of its expansion plans, Indegene is also expected to hire up to 2,500 people this fiscal year across offices, out of which about 2,000 will be based in India, 200 in North America, 100 in Japan and China, and the remaining in Europe. It has a total headcount of about 4,000 employees globally. 

The acquisition of MME is expected to specifically help emerging biotech companies offering solutions in rare diseases, determine and communicate the optimal market value of their innovations. MME offers pricing and reimbursement, contracting strategy and tactics, and custom payer market research to address these challenges, Indegene said. 

“MME has vast experience in rare diseases, oncology, orphan drugs, biosimilars and newer technologies like gene therapy and CAR-T. Their 40+ strong team will strengthen our emerging biotech and medical offerings. They bring proven PRMA (pricing, reimbursement and market access) capabilities that complement our co-commercialization solution,” said Gupta. 

According to reports, biotech originators are creating more than $251 billion in innovation value but these organizations are often unable to capitalize on the value they create, since more than half of them have limited commercialization capabilities. “Indegene and MME’s disruptive model helps them to not just build the right strategy, but also execute it all the way through commercialization,” the company said.