By Mike Harris Friday, July 19th, 2024

Ventura County Supervisor Jeff Gorell is leading a delegation of regional biotech executives to India next month to explore growth opportunities and promote the county as a prime destination for life sciences innovation. 

Gorell told the Business Times July 15 that he has been in talks for months with former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, now the U.S. ambassador to India, about the possibility of such a trade mission.

Gorell knows Garcetti from his six-plus years as deputy mayor of Los Angeles for homeland security and public safety.

“I reached out to him to see if he would host a biotech delegation to break down barriers to mutual opportunities between our biotech sector and the Indian markets and he said yes,” Gorell said.

India has the fifth-largest economy in the world and is projected to have the third-largest over the next decade.

Biotech firms whose executives will be part of the trade mission to India Aug. 5-9 are:

• Life sciences giant Amgen, based in Thousand Oaks, which opened a wholly owned subsidiary, Amgen Technology, in Mumbai, India in 2013.

• Photothermal Spectroscopy, headquartered in Santa Barbara.

• Fomat Medical Research, based in Oxnard.

• E-Control Systems in Los Angeles, which in the past year has opened an office in India to enter the market there and to establish a research and development partnership.

• Afecta Pharmaceuticals in Orange County.

Also going is Brent Reinke, founder and chair of the BioScience Alliance, a nonprofit that supports biotech firms on the Highway 101 corridor spanning the West San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles and Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. 

At Gorell’s behest, Reinke, a senior shareholder at the Westlake Village office of law firm Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth, helped recruit most of the delegation to India.

The firm represents two of the companies that are part of the delegation – Photothermal Spectroscopy and E-Control Systems.

Fomat CEO Nicholas Focil, who will be going on the trade mission, said he’s excited at the prospect of opening doors with India’s biomedical sector.

“It’s a growing area of investment in India,” he said.

“I would love to see our 101 Corridor be the catalyst to this boom in technology and cross-collaboration,” Focil said. 

Such a partnership has great promise for the Central Coast biotech sector not only from a technology perspective but also from a job-generating perspective, he said.

To support the mission, the delegation has partnered with the U.S. Commercial Service, which does trade promotion, to organize three conferences in New Delhi, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad. 

Gorell said the mission’s objectives are to:

• Facilitate direct interactions with Indian stakeholders, industry leaders, and government officials to foster partnerships and enhance trade relations.

• Gain an understanding of regulatory, compliance, and trade policies in the biotech industry and the business environment for innovative companies.

• Connect with leaders in research and development in India to identify market opportunities for tri-county biotech products.

• Locate pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies interested in purchasing those products and clinical research services.

• Establish partnerships for R&D collaboration.

• Engage with medical device companies in India looking to expand into the U.S. market.

• Meet with venture capitalists in India investing in medical devices or biopharma companies to learn about technologies that are being funded.

Gorell’s 2nd Supervisorial District includes Thousand Oaks, home to about 20 life sciences firms in addition to Amgen. 

Thousand Oaks is in the greater Conejo Valley, where other biotech companies are located.

Several dozen other life sciences firms such as Fomat are headquartered in other parts of Ventura County, Reinke said.

Reinke said he reached out to other biotech firms in the region to see if they wanted to be part of the delegation, but they declined.

“They would say, ‘It sounds really interesting but right now, that’s not an area of focus for us,’” he said.

Gorell said he came up with the idea for the trade mission to India after being elected to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors in 2022.

He said he wanted to find ways to be supportive of his district’s biotech industry, the biggest employment sector there.

Amgen alone has thousands of workers in Thousand Oaks, making it the largest private-sector employer in Ventura County.

In conversations with the life sciences companies, some of them, including Amgen, expressed interest in expanding their opportunities in India, Gorell said.

“And I scratched my head for a minute and said ‘Wow, that’s not necessarily something that falls right in the wheelhouse of a county supervisor,’” he said.

That’s when he turned to his friend Garcetti, who became ambassador to India in 2023, and whose top priority was to create mutual economic opportunities for the U.S. and India, Gorell said.

Garcetti agreed to host the biotech delegation, he said.

Reinke said he ideally would like to develop a “sister city” collaborative relationship between biotech companies in India and those along the 101 corridor.

“Hopefully find opportunities maybe for selling services or products, or drugs into India and perhaps partnering up with companies there that can act as distributors for companies here,” he said.

“I think there’s a variety of opportunities,” Reinke said.

Also helping to organize the trade mission is the Camarillo-based Economic Development Collaborative’s Small Business Development Center, part of a national program funded by the Small Business Administration.

“This is kind of an exploratory trade mission, but we’re hoping it’s going to lead to many more trade missions into other countries as well,” said Ray Bowman, director of the region’s SBDC.

Among other services, the nonprofit provides businesses in Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties with international trade growth assistance.

Simona Racek, an SBDC trade specialist, said the “entry strategy” for next month’s trade mission is to focus on an R&D collaboration between India biotech companies and their 101 Corridor counterparts.

“Because that will open conversations in all the other areas,” she said.

They include locating buyers and foreign investment in Ventura County, Racek said.

Other support for the trade mission comes from the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development and Women in International Trade Orange County. 

Gorell stressed that no Ventura County taxpayer funds are being used to finance the delegation to India.

Each of the companies are paying their own way, he said.

And he’s using personal funds and leftover campaign funds as permitted by the state, Gorell said.

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