Posted on 17 April, 2021
“India needs to nurture and retain its human talent, attract
global capital, and integrate with global supply chains. Improvement in
education and urbanization will help India ensure that its own best minds stay
home. India should also welcome the entrepreneurs and scientists from overseas
to live and work in the country,” writes Mukul Gulati, Managing Partner, Zephyr
Peacock.
Click here to read the full article on “The Economic Times”
Below is an excerpt from the post that first appeared on The
Economic Times on 17 April 2021:
The rapid development of Covid
vaccines is a miracle of modern science and a triumph of human ingenuity. While
typical vaccine development cycles last for four or more years, the global
pharma industry has developed several safe and effective vaccines in less than
a year.
Scott Lincicome of the Cato
Institute has chronicled the development of the vaccines made by
BioNtech-Pfizer and Moderna. Lincicome asserts that neither of these vaccines
would be possible without our globalized economy that matches the best global
talent with capital and resources.
Both the vaccines are based on
the specialized messenger RNA (“mRNA”) technology used by BioNtech-Pfizer and
Moderna. Katalin Kariko, a Hungarian immigrant in the United States developed
this technology. Kariko is now a senior scientist at BioNtech, a company
founded by the children of Turkish immigrants in Germany. During the early days
of its Covid vaccine development process, BioNtech’s management realized that
their company needed financial muscle and manufacturing prowess. BioNtech
partnered with the US pharma giant Pfizer, which is led by Albert Boula, an
immigrant from Morocco. Boston-based Moderna’s co-founders are from Lebanon and
Canada, the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer are from
France and Israel.
Pfizer is an NYSE listed company
with access to low-cost capital from the US equity and debt markets. About $2
billion of that capital was used to see the vaccine through the trial and
manufacturing process. Moderna, despite a modest record of financial
performance, raised billions of dollars from venture capital investors and
public market investor based on the potential of its technology. The capital
secured by Moderna, along with financial support from the US National Institute
of Health, helped the company develop, test and manufacture the vaccine at
unprecedented speed. The private and public capital markets in the United
States do a great job at pooling domestic and global savings that support risk
taking and innovation.
Pfizer uses manufacturing
facilities based in Belgium, Germany and the US. Moderna manufactures its
vaccines in Spain, Switzerland and the US. Covid is a global problem that
needed a global solution. Global human talent combined with global capital markets
and global manufacturing expertise are helping solve the biggest global health
crisis over the last 100 years.
Unfortunately, the arrival of Covid-19 has accelerated the long running political trends against globalization, especially in the western democracies. In the emerging world, including India, we seem to have forgotten that since the fall of the Berlin wall, globalization has helped improve millions of lives across the globe, particularly in China and India.
Zephyr Management is a global emerging markets investment manager, specializing in the creation and management of highly focused private equity funds
Since its inception in 1994, Zephyr has sponsored and/or managed 26 investment funds in both public and private securities markets representing approximately $1.2 billion in combined commitments and assets under management
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