Graeme Martin has worked as chief executive of Japan-based pharmaceutical company Takeda’s corporate venturing unit, which he joined when it was in development, for nearly 10 years.
Takeda Ventures has invested $50m in 18 companies, four of which have been acquired while 13 are strategically active. Martin said: “The strategic value for Takeda is pretty significant. Although the rate of investment has been pretty pedestrian, everything is carefully selected to take minority positions enabling the building of a strategic relationship with Takeda.”
He added: “Measuring strategic value is a tough thing. Yet with the $50m we have put in, we have leveraged $900m of other money. This is pretty impressive financial leverage. It was surprising to me to analyse our annual dealflow. About 30% of it is under the radar, with no public information available. This access to information is through our venture network, so we are seeing a lot of things that, frankly, the company would not see.”
Martin came to Takeda after he found out they were setting up the venturing unit in the early part of this decade. He was a consultant, having left Switzerland-based drugs peer F Hoffmann La Roche in 2001. He was a senior research scientist at Wellcome Research Laboratories, now part of GlaxoSmithKline.
What is the future of your sector?
Martin said: “I think now would be a great time to talk about two topics in pharma. Why will the pharma-academia relationship for innovation work this time around? Also the IT-dians are coming. What has pharma and the IT sector got to do to ensure they mesh, rather than rush past one another in opposite directions, and continue to emphasise the smarter strategic aspect of the corporate venturing relationship in early-stage companies? Doing so could help build companies that fill in the spaces, maybe leveraging pharma’s own internal assets as a starting point.”