Novartis CEO Vasant Narasimhan on Transforming a 250-Year-Old Company
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What is Novartis’s transformation story from a 250‑year‑old conglomerate to a pure‑play medicines company?
We l unlocked almost $180 billion of value. Took this company that was a conglomerate and we turned it into four companies. We had these other businesses, but it was never really the core of kind of who we are. We were misallocating capital. Spinning off companies sounds easy in retrospect. Uh actually spinning off three public companies is a massive, massive undertaking. I can rewind a disease or completely, in some cases, almost create a function. Cure for patients. One of our sentinel patients was an individual in bed all the time, receives our cell therapy. Six months later, no sign of disease. I mean, this is extraordinary. Cell therapy is an immunology alongside immune reset, bicep, tri-specific. That is going to be a whole renaissance for cell therapy.
When Vasant Nerasimhan became CEO of Novartis in two thousand eighteen. He inherited a conglomerate consumer health, animal health, vaccines, generics, devices. Over six years, he spun off three public companies and unlocked almost $180 billion of value. Today Novartis is focused on four disease areas and three platform technologies. Cell and gene therapies, RNA medicines, and radioligand therapies. One of their gene therapies, ZolgenSma, treats children with spinal muscular atrophy. A disease that would otherwise be fatal by age two. It costs over two million dollars and it's reimbursed in forty eight countries. Basin started his career doing public health work on tuberculosis in Peru with Paul Farmer and Jim Kim.
That still shapes how he thinks about access to medicines today. A sixteen Z general partner Jorge Kondi talks with Vasant Narasimhan, CEO of Navardis International.
So boss, I wanna welcome you back to the A Six and Z podcast. Thank you very much for being here. It's great to be back. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Appreciate you making time. So why don't we start with just a brief introduction? So you are the CEO of Novartis. Novartis is, of course, one of the top 10 global pharmaceutical companies, has had major impact across a range of diseases, has major impact on patients around the world. But for the audience, maybe we start with that brief introduction. Can you give us what Novartis Artist is in a nutshell. And who Voss is in a nutshell? Why don't we start there?
Yeah, absolutely. All right. So Novartis, two hundred and fifty year old company. That's really been a conglomerate for most of its history, but I think we'll talk about it over the last 10 years. We've really focused it down as a pure play medicines company. We reach about 300 million patients around the world. We operate in over a hundred countries, over roughly $55 billion in sales, nearing a 300 billion market cap.
How did Vasant Narasimhan decide to spin off consumer health, animal health, vaccines and other businesses?
And we really focus on four core therapeutic areas oncology, immunology. Technology, neuroscience, and cardiorenal. And we're really into platform technologies. I've really tried to pivot the company into leading platform technologies. Myself, I'm a physician scientist by training. I grew up mostly doing RD work and public health work at the company and with some business roles, became CEO in 2018. And in that period of time, we've spun off a lot of businesses, focused on I think that'll be a lot of what we talked about today.
One of the things I loved about your background is the work you did as a student. So if I read your bio correctly, you did your thesis in multi drug resistance and tuberculosis
patients in Peru. That is correct. Yeah. A lot of my time in medical school and shortly thereafter was focused on global public health. That's actually, I think, a lot of why even today I focus Novart as heavily into being a leader in neglected tropical diseases, access to medicines. But yeah, I worked with luminaries like Jim Kim and Paul Farmer, multidrug resistant tuberculosis, access to antiretrovirals to patients in Africa. That was a huge part of my early development. an early part of my career and I try to take that forward now.
What are Novartis’s three core platform technologies – cell & gene therapy, RNA medicines, and radioligand therapy?
Yeah, and
the reason why that stood out to me is my father's Peruvian. So Oh really? So that half of me, thanks you very much.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is Novartis’s transformation story from a 250‑year‑old conglomerate to a pure‑play medicines company?
0:00–2:41
2
How did Vasant Narasimhan decide to spin off consumer health, animal health, vaccines and other businesses?
2:41–3:53
3
What are Novartis’s three core platform technologies – cell & gene therapy, RNA medicines, and radioligand therapy?
3:53–48:26
4
Why does Novartis believe cell and gene therapies are currently punching below their potential and how are they advancing them?
48:26–58:02
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