The smell arrives before the patient does. Some late-stage cancers break through the skin into open wounds whose odour fills a room. For a patient in their final months, that costs dignity.
That wound is the lead target of Vyome Holdings (Nasdaq: HIND), a drug developer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was co-founded by Venkat Nelabhotla, an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus and former Emami CEO, with Harvard physician-scientist Dr. Shiladitya Sengupta. Vyome has raised more than $50 million, moved its headquarters from New Delhi to the US, and listed on Nasdaq in August 2025.
The unlikely part is the founder. Venkat Nelabhotla spent the first half of his career selling shampoo.
Check out the video of the conversation here or read on for insights.
Who is Venkat Nelabhotla, the Vyome founder who started in FMCG?
Venkat trained as a mechanical engineer at MNNIT before his MBA at IIM Ahmedabad. He joined CavinKare, the company behind Chik shampoo, as a marketing controller. Within about a year and a half he was running it. By his account, revenue grew from roughly ₹25 crore to about ₹200 crore in five or six years.
His first brush with biotech came next, as president at Shantha Biotechnics. He helped launch India’s first recombinant hepatitis B vaccine at ₹300 a dose, when multinationals charged about ₹800. Sanofi later acquired Shantha in a deal reported at around $800 million.
After Shantha, he spent two years at Aurobindo Pharma selling generics globally. He then served as CEO and executive director of Emami from 2007 to 2010.
Those years taught him where pharma’s value sits:
Generics, copies of off-patent drugs, are India’s strength. By his estimate they make up only about a quarter of the global market.
Patented new drugs hold most of the value, but they take eight to ten years and three phases of clinical trials to reach patients.
It’s a kind of high risk and high reward game. It’s actually, I would say, medium risk if you do it smartly.
How did Vyome raise money when Indian VCs avoided drug discovery?
Venkat knew Indian investors would balk at a ten-year wait for a US approval. So Vyome Biosciences started in New Delhi with patented dermatology products that could be tested and launched in India quickly. Two antifungals were licensed to Sun Pharma, which gave Vyome validation and a small royalty stream.
Navam Capital provided seed money, and Kalaari Capital came in early. Seed and Series A totalled about $3.5 million, followed by a Series B of about $8 million.
Fundraising was the real adjustment. At CavinKare and Emami, capital had chased him.
Investors have come to me because we were always in demand.
The turn came in Series C, when a large US biotech fund invested. Its diligence gave the Indian backers the confidence to follow as Vyome pivoted to US-focused immuno-inflammatory drugs.
Why did Vyome move its headquarters to the US?
The US investors wanted Vyome near American capital, talent and regulators.
Listing is required to give an exit to investors, right?
The move had three steps:
With PwC advising, the drug business was demerged through the NCLT into a new Indian company.
That company was owned by a new US parent.
After RBI approval, the US parent issued mirrored shares to the Indian shareholders.
The move finished around early 2019. Venkat estimates Indian VCs still hold roughly 20 to 25% of the company.
What does Vyome Holdings do, and how does it make money?
Vyome takes molecules already approved for one use and reformulates them into a new form for a different disease. The existing safety data lowers risk, and the new form earns fresh patents. Rare diseases also mean smaller trials and FDA incentives.
The lead drug. VT-1953 is a gel version of besifloxacin, an antibiotic sold as eye drops, for the odour and pain of malignant fungating wounds.
Its Phase 2 trial enrolled just 15 patients, and Vyome reported positive final results in December 2025.
An independent assessment by Destum Partners puts a current value on VT-1953 of about $455 million. It estimates roughly $1 billion after Phase 3, on a $2.2 billion US addressable market.
The rest of the pipeline:
VT-1908, a non-steroid eye drop for uveitis.
VB-1953, a Phase 3-ready acne gel Vyome wants to license to a partner.
JAK inhibitors licensed from Tata-backed Impetis Biosciences, for only a 1.5% royalty on future sales.
Revenue and team. Revenue today is small: $58,546 in the first half of 2026, mostly royalties tied to Sun Pharma’s Luliconazole sales. About 18 people run the company. Most are in India, and the leadership and clinical team are in the US.
How did Vyome list on Nasdaq, and what is HIND worth today?
Vyome skipped the IPO and merged into ReShape Lifesciences, a Nasdaq company that had sold its device business. The deal closed in August 2025, with Vyome’s shareholders owning about 88%. The ticker HIND nods to the US-India corridor Vyome runs on.
The company raised about $7.5 million around the listing and about $5.29 million more in January 2026. HIND stock opened near $14 to $15. By late August 2026 it traded around $2.24, a market cap of about $15.7 million, with $7.9 million in cash and no debt.
I understand it’s part of the thing. I’ve seen many public companies.
Small-cap biotechs, in his view, trade on milestones.
What comes next for Vyome?
The next steps run through the FDA:
Orphan drug status. Vyome applied in January 2026. Approval would bring seven years of US exclusivity and fee waivers.
Trial plan. It received the FDA’s written feedback in the second quarter and plans another meeting before the pivotal study.
Results. Venkat expects Phase 3 readouts around end-2027 or early 2028.
He also has a diagnosis for India. On his own gut-feel index of novel drug discovery, the US scores 100, China about 40, and India two to five. His fix is a GIFT City-style “biotech sovereign zone” with free capital flows and long-term talent visas.
If VT-1953 is approved, Venkat Nelabhotla’s Vyome would be one of the clearest returns yet for Indian investors on a novel drug.
Listen now!
Other ways to listen:
Read more on Indian healthcare companies going global: Indegene’s Manish Gupta, Wysa’s Ramakant Vempati and LifeCell’s Mayur Abhaya.