Income Tax officials conducted searches at the premises of leading pharmaceutical company Hetero Drugs in Hyderabad on Wednesday. Different teams of I-T officials were carrying out searches at the corporate office and production centres of the company. Searches were also underway at the offices and residences of Hetero CEO and Directors. Hetero, has 36 state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities worldwide, manufactures products for major therapeutic categories such as HIV/AIDS, oncology, cardiovascular, neurology, hepatitis, nephrology etc.
Among the largest producers of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in the world, its strategic business areas spread across APIs, global generics, biosimilars, and custom pharmaceutical services. The Rs 7,500 crore pharma major is one of the firms that has tied up with Russian Direct Investment Fund to manufacture COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V in India.
The I-T searches come days after Hetero Group Chairman B Parthasaradhi Reddy was ranked second richest man from Hyderabad. According to Hurun India Rich List 2021, Parthasaradhi Reddy and family of Hetero Labs ranks 58 in the list of wealthiest Indians. His wealth grew by 88% in a year to Rs 26,100 crore. Last year, he was ranked 81.
In the Hurun India Rich List 2021, for the 10th year in a row industrialist Mukesh Ambani earned the top spot as the richest man in India, with an estimated net worth of $96.6 billion (Rs 7,18,000 crore). Gautam Adani was listed second, with a wealth of Rs 5,05,900 crore. Shiv Nadar, founder and chairman emeritus of HCL Technologies, was listed third.
Hetero was recently in the news after it announced on September that the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) had issued Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) for the generic version of Tocilizumab in India. "We are pleased with the approval of Hetero's Tocilizumab (Tocira) in India. This demonstrates our technical capabilities and commitment to bringing important therapeutics relevant to Covid care. This approval is extremely crucial for supply security in India considering a global shortage of Tocilizumab. We will be working closely with the government to ensure equitable distribution," Partha Saradhi Reddy, Chairman, Hetero Group, had said in a statement at the time.
With IANS inputs