Stem Cell Therapy lights up hope for Start-ups

Stem Cell Banking is not a recent phenomenon in India, and therefore has graduated from simply storing stem cells to researching and therapy. Although the number of banks will outgrow the number of technology and research focused start-ups at any given day, given the profits attached to the business model of the former, experts suggest that the stem cell therapy market in India is expected to reach Rs.2 billion by the year 2018. The global market, however, would be anywhere between US $35-40 billion in 2016.
Sooner or later, India is going to witness a rise in the number of stem cell banks, add to that government support and liberalisation in the space and more cell depositors, the space could attract a number of start-ups. Noida-based Advancells, a research a technology centric Stem Cell Therapy solution provider was set up in 2013 with the sole aim of providing world-class therapies for patients with life-threatening diseases.
Retailer media caught up with the serial entrepreneur, Vipul Jain, who, after having dabbled in areas such as apparel export, TV Production and Medical Tourism, felt a need for better stem cell research in the country and consequently setup Advancells in 2013. Here are some excerpts:      

Please share your background. Your education and whether entrepreneurship was something you always wanted to do?
I am an MBA from Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York. I have been a serial entrepreneur and entrepreneurship was the only thing that I ever knew. 

How was the idea of your start-up conceptualised? What is the need you are addressing in the market?
The idea for Advancells actually came from another company I co-founded, which was in the Medical Tourism Space. A lot of our clients starting asking us about stem cell therapy and when we could not find a credible and quality partner in the world, I decided to invest in it myself and create a world class organisation which would be patient centric, only focusing on results.
We are addressing the large vacuum created where there is no conventional treatment available for a patient and research and science is still out of reach for the patient.  

What is your business model?
We work with hospitals and doctors to bring regenerative medicine solutions to patients. Patients get a package that would include all medical expenditure for the case and we earn pre-negotiated fees from the hospital for each case…for processing the cells and creating protocols. 
We deal with Autologous cells (where cells are created from the patient’s own body sources like Bone Marrow and Adipose Tissue), and Allogenic cells (where cells are grown in lab from donor sources like cord tissue). We are a research-focused company, so most of our work is pro bono but still we are operationally profitable and our turnover is approximately INR 5 Cr. 

Who is your target consumer? Could you please share how you have detailed your consumer?
Our target customer is a patient suffering from life threatening ailment who has either no or limited conventional treatment available. Our medical team assesses each case on viability factors and decides whether our therapy can help the patient or not. Unfortunately, we have to reject almost 60 per cent of the patients that come to us as either their disease is too advanced or it does not fall in our inclusion/exclusion criteria.

What is your current distribution in brick and mortar space? What are your future distribution plans?
We operate out of hospitals and get most of our referrals from there. We intend to increase our hospital base throughout the country in the given year. 

Have you risen any funding so far? What are your plans to use this funding for?
No, we are self-funded but hopefully will raise a Series-A round shortly to invest more in technology, talent and marketing. 

What is your team size? What is your office culture like? 
We are about 30 people now. The culture is very open where passion for your work supersedes everything. We believe that everyone has their primary responsibility (like technology, marketing, HR admin, etc) but everyone need to work in other areas as well so that they can understand all aspects of work and contribute to every section. Having a small team allows us this flexibility.

What has been your biggest challenge so far in scaling-up? How are you addressing it? 
Finding acceptability in the medical community is the biggest challenge. We are addressing it by working closely with doctors and showing them results before enrolling them on our panels. Stem cells are regularly called the future of modern medicine and as we see it, Advancells has the potential to become the largest medical company in the world. We just want to keep enrolling more doctors to work with us and keep expanding our reach not just PAN India but around the world. Our philosophy is to keep moving forward, one patient at a time.