In this episode of Molecule to Market, you’ll go inside the outsourcing space of the global drug development sector with Marcel Velterop, CEO and Member of the Board at Primopus.
Your host, Raman Sehgal, discusses the pharmaceutical and biotechnology supply chain with Marcel, covering:
Tips for technical people looking to transition and navigate into a commercial career path
Why the CDMO business is not for the faint-hearted given the brutal focus on execution and results
Insights from a lifetime of doing business in India and the key components of a successful tech transfer across multi-national sites
How oligonucleotides have gone from niche to mainstream, and why an oligos platform presents a major new tool in the healthcare toolbox

Marcel holds a masters degree in chemical engineering from Delft University of Technology and started his career at DSM where he spent 14 years in various roles of growing responsibility. He then joined Dr Reddy’s Laboratories CPS, a CDMO, and subsequently worked for large Indian providers like Sai Life Sciences and Jubilant Biosys. He gained extensive international experience during his 4 years in the US and now over 15 years in Switzerland and aims to work with cultural differences globally and build productive collaborations.
He found purpose in the pharma industry and helping drive innovation as a service provider in the CDMO and CRO industries. During the Covid times, an opportunity presented itself to work for a large India CDMO, who had acquired a GMP API plant just outside Basel, Switzerland. As CEO of Primopus he is building a hybrid business model with complex RSMs and intermediates supplied out of the Swiss site with full backward integration from the large capacity available in India at its parent company.
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Molecule to Market is sponsored and funded by ramarketing, an international marketing, design, digital and content agency helping companies differentiate, get noticed and grow in life sciences.