Curis Lifesciences is a pharmaceutical manufacturer that makes finished medicines - tablets, capsules, liquids, creams and a rare sterile eye ointment - for other companies to sell under their own names, mostly in Africa. It began in 2010 as a small partnership called Loretto Pharmaceutical, converted to a private company in 2016, and built its factory in a Gujarat government industrial zone where land was unusually cheap. The recurring approach is to use that low-cost manufacturing base to serve clients who handle the branding and marketing, while gradually shifting toward registering and selling products under its own name in markets where big Indian pharma companies have barely set foot.
Business segments
A single manufacturing engine that makes finished-dose medicines for clients across three business models - loan licensing, contract manufacturing, and own-brand export - each at a different stage of margin and maturity, all running on the same Sanand factory floor.
1. Contract manufacturing: the factory that works for other people's brands
Curis makes the tablet, capsule or ointment from scratch - formula, raw materials, testing, stability - while the client only brings the brand name and the marketing.
- Full product responsibility - under contract manufacturing, Curis handles quality, formulas, stability testing, bioavailability (how the drug behaves in the body) and procurement of all raw materials; the client is responsible only for the brand name and selling the product.
- Two export routes from the same line - domestic contract manufacturing serves Indian clients like JB Chemical, Cadila and Troika at fixed margins the client sets, while merchant export contract manufacturing serves clients who register and sell the products in foreign countries, with Curis providing the technical dossiers and documents.
- Deliberately capped at home, grown abroad - the company plans to keep domestic contract manufacturing stable rather than grow it because margins are limited, but aims to increase merchant export contract manufacturing to 30-40% of sales.
- Cheap land lowers the cost base - the Sanand GIDC factory sits on land described as "very, very, very cheap" compared to the rest of Ahmedabad, with government benefits including partial upfront payment and instalments, which keeps fixed costs low for a facility spanning 2,827 square metres.
- Wide but shallow capacity - annual production lines can make 1,380 million tablets, 157 million capsules, 1.08 million litres of oral liquids, and smaller quantities of sterile and non-sterile ointments, but utilisation runs between 16% and 44%, so there is plenty of room to add volume without new buildings.
2. Own-brand exports: planting Curis's own flag in Africa
The company registers its own products with its own name in a handful of African countries - a tiny business today, but the one that carries the highest margins and the long-term ambition.
- Registration is the ticket, and it is slow - getting a product approved in an export country takes one to two years and costs roughly $5,000 per product per country (far more for Europe), involving formula development, a dossier, factory audits and regulatory queues.
- Currently two countries, less than 1% of revenue - direct exports under Curis's own license operate only in Yemen and Kenya, contributing under 1% of total sales, with plans to register 10 products in Nigeria next and then Kenya.
- Big competitors are absent - large Indian pharma companies like Zydus and Mankind focus on Europe, the US or domestic markets and have very few products registered in Africa, so Curis faces less competition from them in markets like Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya.
- One or two brands, not a portfolio - the own-brand strategy is deliberately narrow: establish only one or two brands in a market rather than trying to build a full shelf of products.
- Kenya as a template - 20 products are already registered in Kenya through a partner, with purchase orders secured for 12, and the company believes successful registrations there provide a replicable model for Tanzania, Uganda and Nigeria that cuts time-to-market.
3. Loan licensing: the fading legacy model
A low-margin arrangement where the client brings everything - raw materials, formulas, even a chemist - and Curis provides only machines and labour; now being wound down to under 1% of sales.
- Client-owned, Curis-operated - under loan licensing, the partner company supplies all raw materials, stability data and a chemist; Curis contributes only machinery and labour, and the client transports the finished goods away.
- Phased out by choice - the model has been deliberately shrunk because margins are too low, and as of December 2025 it contributed less than 1% of total sales.
Group structure and partners
A four-founder promoter group that recently added a majority-owned domestic subsidiary and operates an African joint venture to share the risk of entering unfamiliar markets.
- Four promoters - Jaimik Patel (marketing, compliance and regulatory strategy, with a Master's in Pharmacology from the UK), Dharmesh Patel (Managing Director, 15-plus years in pharmacy), Piyush Antala (full-time director, pharmacy background) and Siddhant Pawasia (overseeing accounts and purchase operations) run the company, with Pragnesh Sharma as CFO.
- Uninova Lifesciences subsidiary - in March 2026, Curis acquired a 51% stake in Uninova Lifesciences, an Indian company that manufactures and trades pharmaceutical products under the "Uninova" brand, for a cash consideration of about ₹20.7 lakh, with the existing promoters retaining 49%.
- Eurosun joint venture for Nigeria - Curis has a JV with Eurosun Pharmaceuticals, a merchant exporter with more than five to seven years of experience and over ₹10 crore in Nigerian sales; Eurosun handles all marketing and distribution while Curis is the exclusive manufacturer for all product categories except injectables, with expenses and profits split.