Bilcare buys Singular for Rs 55 cr

MUMBAI: Pharmaceutical packaging material maker Bilcare Ltd said on Friday its wholly owned subsidiary Bilcare Singapore Pte Ltd has acquired Singular ID, a provider of anti-counterfeit security firm, for S$19.58 million (approximately Rs 55 crore).

Singapore-based Singular is a research start-up that has technology to prevent counterfeiting of drugs. The company has four patents for this technology and has applied for more. Last year, the company had revenues of S$1,50,000 (Rs 41 lakh).

Vineet Mehrotra, CFO, Bilcare, told DNA Money: “The money is paid for the intellectual property of the company.”

The Singular technology works on fingerprint technology. This will make each medicine unique and hence easily distinguishable from a counterfeit. It gives a unique number to each package that can be only read by scanners.

“We will launch this product un second half of the year. Currently, we are devising ways to manufacture cheap scanners. So, each chemist shop can at least have one scanner,” Mehrotra said.

Bilcare already offers solutions that include patented material for packaging, using designsthat cannot be easily copied and fitting each package with chips that has Radio-frequency identification.

According to the company, counterfeit is a large market; a $50 billion opportunity. “The problem of counterfeiting is worsening and by 2010 the counterfeits are expected to touch $75 billion of the $600 billion global pharmaceutical market.