If you have any remote interest in biotechnology or healthcare and pharmaceutical development, then you need to know the name, Vivek Ramaswamy: past CEO of Roviant, a biotech holding company.
In this article, you will learn about Ramaswamy’s story of success as well as the ins and out of his biotech company, health care innovation, and drug development.
Ramaswamy is Stepping Down From CEO
Just recently, Vivek Ramaswamy has stepped down as CEO. This, however, does not mean he is leaving Roivant.
Instead, as of January 25th, he will officially be an Executive Chairman instead.
He told chairholders that part of the reason he was stepping down was in part of his “increasing public engagement.”
Past chief financial officer, Matt Gline, will be taking over as Roivant’s CEO. He, instead of Roivant, will be tasked with completely all of the necessary day-to-day operations.
Just because he is stepping down, however, doesn’t mean that Ramaswamy is not focusing on growing the company.
As an Executive Chairman, he is setting his sights on acquiring and developing large collaborations.
What you need to know about Vivek Ramaswamy
In recent years, Ramaswamy has received a plethora of attention. From being in Forbes Magazine, as well as a commentator for the Wall Street Journal, he has found himself in the limelight quite a bit.
He mentioned that this is one of the reasons for taking a step back as CEO for Roivant.
Who is he? Why is he important and successful? And most importantly, why are his contributions important?
Before creating his own pharmaceutical empires, he was an avid investor. In 2008, he began buying shares for Pharmasset.
He noticed as a partner for QVT and as an investor, that it was frustrating to see the numbers decreasing in company R&D departments. So, he decided to found his own company: Roivant.
He is best known in the industry for securing and leveraging high-profile deals.
In 2016, Vivek Ramaswamy was recognized by Forbes magazine as a leading entrepreneur under forty years old.
Ramaswamy’s Success
The attention he has garnered mostly comes from his previous years as a successful investor. In 2008, he was an analyst for a company called QVT Financial.
From there, he was able to buy shares for Pharmasset and by 2011 he was one of the company’s top shareholders.
Like other investors before him, he used a “buy low, sell high” technique. This venture with QVT Financial led to him being a partner with them.
It is no secret that Vivek Ramaswamy has had immense success. One of his first major successes was helping to develop an Alzheimer’s disease drug. The company was able to develop it because they ceased to focus on the neuroscience field.
Ramaswamy talked about the Alzheimer’s disease drug in an interview and said,
“It’s a curious fact that the top two drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, Aricept (donepezil hydrochloride) and Namenda (memantine HCI) had both been sitting on shelves and required revival before eventually gaining U.S. approval.”
Part of the success of that particular drug was that Ramaswamy brought on Larry Friedhoff, M.D., Ph.D. to lead the development of the drug. He was responsible for creating Aricept, the drug that Roivant created to help treat Alzheimer’s disease.
Since Ramaswamy is not a Ph.D. scientist but is known for knowing the best people to surround himself with. He even admits that he has staff that is largely the backbone of the company.
What Is Roivant?
Roivant specializes in developing “transformative medicines faster by building technologies and developing talent in creative ways,” according to its website.
The business specialized in further investing in biopharmaceutical companies that show promising drug contenders in the industry.
Roivant has recently launched a new company. The company subsidiary is called Lokavant. The purpose of the company is to ensure that clinical trials do not fail because of operational errors.
Lokavant centralizes data from clinical trials so they are able to power a machine learning program to ” “anticipates trial risk, provides risk mitigation strategies and predicts the impact of mitigation strategy implementation,” according to biospace.com.
Lokavant, the new Can is headed by Rohit Nambisan who, at Roivant used to be the head of Digital Product at Roivant Sciences.
How Does Roivant Operate and How Is it Beneficial?
In order to spearhead research and development, the company uses a “hub and spoke” technique.
This means that the biopharmaceutical subsidiary operates independently (“spoke”) while using common resources from the parent (“hub”) and then Roivant leaves the technology-based subsidiaries to work on different aspects of data science.
Speaking of subsidiaries, Roivant has fourteen of them. They are also known as “can’t” companies.
Some of these vants have been really successful, leading to a few notable deals both for the amount of money raised as well as developing relationships with drug partners.
Roivant takes a specific and keen approach to drug development. Roivant is successful at navigating the complicated and sometimes risky pharmaceutical industry.
Ramaswamy has a specific approach where he has his vants conduct as independent entities. This allows for the same agility, transformation, and pioneer spirit that start-up companies typically see.
This combination has led to immense innovation for Roivant in the biotech field.
Vivek Ramaswamy’s Story: Now You Know
From investing to being CEO of Roivant, Ramaswamy has managed to find immense success in his ever-changing and developing field.
It will be interesting to see how Vivek Ramaswamy continues to make strides in the healthcare and drug development industry in his new role as Executive Chairman.
