How Lupin Collaborated with a Pune Scientist for India’s Vitamin B6 Breakthrough
Pune, 23rd June 2026: Along with TB drugs and cephalosporins, Dr Desh Bandhu Gupta (DBG) was keen to explore other products for both API and formulations. He took over a project to make Vitamin B6 API from competitor Themis Laboratories who was unable to overcome production issues. DBG contacted the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) in Pune for a solution. The supplement had never been produced in India, despite B6 being a critical nutrient. The body does not produce B6 naturally, so people must get it from supplements or certain foods. Given Indian dietary habits, Vitamin B6 deficiency is widespread.
Lupin joined forces with Dr A.V. Rama Rao, an outstanding synthetic organic chemist who had returned from a stint at Harvard University and was serving as a top scientist at NCL, Pune. Together, they developed a non-infringing 131 Made in India technology for making Vitamin B6 at a production line within Lupin’s Ankleshwar unit.
Along with high-calibre people, DBG was convinced that a pharma company needed world-class factories. As mentioned earlier, the bulk drug manufacturing plant in Ankleshwar followed the formulations plant in Aurangabad. Thereafter, independent sites were commissioned in Panoli, Gujarat, and Mandideep, Madhya Pradesh. The R&D laboratory was also shifted to Mandideep.
DBG wanted all his children to study science, because he believed it broadened a person’s perspective and opened them to change in the face of logic. In the tradition of a good scientist, DBG had healthy skepticism, suspended judgement and a disciplined mind,1 open to being challenged and fighting with conviction.
