Startup Deep Dive : Immuneel Therapeutics — priced at a tenth of the US cost, still hunting for patients

Qartemi, the cancer therapy built in a Bengaluru lab, is priced at roughly a tenth of what the same class of treatment costs in the United States. Yet the company behind it, Immuneel Therapeutics, took about six years from incorporation to its first commercial dose — and by the time that dose was administered, a domestic rival had already claimed the title of India’s first approved CAR-T therapy.

That gap between technical achievement and commercial timing runs through Immuneel’s story. Co-founded by Biocon’s Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, oncologist-author Siddhartha Mukherjee and venture investor Kush Parmar, the company has raised more than $37 million (Inc42), built a cell-manufacturing operation inside partner hospitals, and reported FY25 revenue of just ₹9.9 crore ($1.03 million) — a 341.0% jump over FY24, but still a rounding error next to the money already spent getting there.

Quick facts

What they do

Immuneel builds and manufactures CAR-T cell therapies — a treatment where a patient’s own immune cells are re-engineered to hunt cancer — and sells the finished, patient-specific therapy to hospitals treating adults with relapsed or refractory B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer that has stopped responding to standard chemotherapy. Its commercial product, Qartemi (generic name varnimcabtagene autoleucel, internally coded IMN-003A), is manufactured at the company’s Bengaluru facility and delivered through partner hospital networks, per the company’s own media disclosures (immuneel.com, accessed September 2026).

The origin

The founding insight was not a new molecule but a new supply chain. CAR-T therapies approved in the West cost between $350,000 and $700,000 per patient, largely because each dose is manufactured individually in centralised, heavily regulated facilities and then shipped back to the patient. Mazumdar-Shaw, Mukherjee and Parmar bet that in-licensing an already-proven CAR-T construct — ARI-0001, developed at Hospital Clínic de Barcelona — and manufacturing it inside Indian hospitals themselves, close to the patient, could collapse both the cost and the turnaround time (PressInsider, January 2025; Labiotech.eu, 2022). Mazumdar-Shaw framed the goal as building “an ecosystem to accelerate and make cell therapies accessible to patients in India, in line with global standards at affordable and disruptive costs” (quoted in Labiotech.eu and the company’s April 2022 Series A release via Able India).

The struggle years

Immuneel was incorporated in December 2018, but it did not put a single patient into a trial until 2022, when it launched the IMAGINE study — a Phase II trial enrolling up to 24 pediatric and adult blood-cancer patients at Narayana Hrudayalaya in Bengaluru, described at the time as the first industry-sponsored CAR-T trial in India (Able India, April 2022). For roughly five years, the company generated no revenue at all: its FY23 accounts show a net loss of ₹39 crore against zero sales (Entrackr, July 2024). Trial data trickled out slowly through conference posters — at ASH 2022 in New Orleans, EHA 2023 in Frankfurt, and SIOP 2023 in Ottawa, where its pediatric results won a best-poster award (immuneel.com media page) — rather than through a product on the market.

The clock cost Immuneel its claimed prize. In October 2023, ImmunoACT, an IIT Bombay spin-off, won CDSCO approval for NexCAR19, based on a 64-patient trial, and is credited by the US National Cancer Institute as “India’s first approved CAR-T cell therapy” (cancer.gov, 2024). Immuneel’s Qartemi would not reach the market for another 15 months. Before it did, the company had to bring in a strategic investor, Taiba Middle East FZ LLC, which put in ₹100 crore (about $12 million) in July 2024 for roughly a 17% stake at a post-money valuation of about ₹587 crore — capital raised before Immuneel had booked a single rupee of commercial revenue (Entrackr, July 2024).

The turning point

The turning point was regulatory, not financial: CDSCO’s approval of Qartemi, built on the IMAGINE trial data, cleared the way for Immuneel to launch commercially in January 2025 through hospital partners including Narayana Health, Apollo Hospitals, CMC Vellore and Manipal Hospitals (immuneel.com media page). The before-and-after is stark in the filings. Before launch: FY23 revenue of zero and a ₹39 crore loss. After launch: FY24 revenue of ₹2.2 crore, then FY25 revenue of ₹9.9 crore — a 341.0% jump in a single year (Inc42, citing statutory filings). By the time of its June 2026 fundraise, the company said it had treated roughly 100 patients in FY26 to date, against a stated annual manufacturing capacity of 300–500 patients, with a target of scaling past 1,000 patients a year (Medical Dialogues, June 2026). The approval converted a research programme into a real, if still small, revenue line.

The money behind it

Immuneel has raised capital in three distinct rounds since 2022, moving from pure venture money to a strategic corporate investor to a broader mix that includes retail-facing fintech capital:

• Series A, April 2022: $15 million, co-led by Eight Roads Ventures, True North Fund VI LLP and F-Prime Capital, alongside existing investors — this funded the IMAGINE clinical trial (Able India; Labiotech.eu).
• Strategic investment, July 2024: ₹100 crore (~$12 million) from Taiba Middle East FZ LLC for approximately 17% of the company, at a post-money valuation of roughly ₹587 crore (~$71 million) — reported as the capital that carried Immuneel through to commercial launch (Entrackr, exclusive, July 2024).
• Series B, June 2026: over ₹100 crore (~$10.5 million), with new investors Singularity AMC and Rainmatter by Zerodha and several high-net-worth individuals, plus follow-on participation from Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Eight Roads Ventures and F-Prime Capital — earmarked for GMP manufacturing capacity, the R&D pipeline and expansion into Asia-Pacific and the Middle East (Entrackr; Medical Dialogues; Indian Startup News, June 2026).

Total funding to date is reported at over $37 million across four rounds by Inc42’s company tracker, with Entrackr’s independent reporting of the individual rounds broadly consistent with that figure.

How it makes money

Immuneel’s revenue comes from a single source: the fee hospitals and patients pay for a completed Qartemi treatment cycle, from cell collection through to the re-engineered infusion. There is no subscription, no insurance-style recurring fee, and — as far as public disclosures show — no separate licensing income yet.

• Money in: a per-patient treatment price. Immuneel’s own January 2025 launch materials put this at ₹51–60 lakh (immuneel.com media page, citing coverage in The Hindu BusinessLine); by the time of its June 2026 funding round, media coverage cited a lower ₹35–40 lakh per patient (Medical Dialogues, June 2026) — both figures are described as roughly a tenth of the $350,000–$700,000 charged for equivalent therapies in the US.
• Costs out: cGMP viral-vector production, a “semi-integrated, semi-automated” closed cell-manufacturing process, and in-hospital manufacturing units placed near bone-marrow transplant centres under what the company calls a “hub and decentralized model” (immuneel.com company page) — infrastructure that has to be built out ahead of patient volume, not after it.
• Where the margin sits: in-hospital, decentralised manufacturing removes the cold-chain shipping and centralised-facility overhead that inflates Western CAR-T pricing; Immuneel has not published a per-dose cost breakdown or gross margin, so the actual unit economics cannot be independently verified from public filings.
• The part people get wrong: a ₹35–60 lakh price tag looks like a high-margin product, but at roughly 100 patients treated in a year (Medical Dialogues, June 2026), full-year revenue lands in single-digit crores — nowhere near the scale needed to offset years of manufacturing capex and trial costs, which is why the company has needed three funding rounds since 2022 rather than turning a profit from sales.

The numbers

Financials below are drawn from statutory filings as aggregated by Inc42 and Entrackr; Immuneel is unlisted and does not publish its own investor financial statements, so figures for years not covered by these reports are marked not disclosed rather than estimated.

• FY23: zero revenue, ₹39 crore net loss — the company was entirely in trial mode (Entrackr, July 2024).
• FY24: first commercial-adjacent revenue of ₹2.2 crore, the year Qartemi cleared regulatory review ahead of its January 2025 launch (Inc42).
• FY25: revenue nearly quadrupled to ₹9.9 crore as Qartemi’s first full year of commercial sales landed (Inc42).

Where the money comes from

There is no segment split to report because there is, functionally, only one segment. Every rupee of Immuneel’s disclosed FY24 and FY25 revenue comes from a single product (Qartemi), for a single indication (relapsed/refractory B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma), sold entirely within India through a small set of partner hospitals:

• Product: 100% of reported revenue is tied to Qartemi; the company has no second approved therapy generating sales (immuneel.com media page).
• Geography: 100% domestic as of FY25; international revenue does not yet exist, even though the June 2026 Series B was explicitly raised to fund expansion into Asia-Pacific and the Middle East (Indian Startup News, June 2026).
• Distribution: delivered through named hospital partners — Narayana Health, Apollo Hospitals, CMC Vellore and Manipal Hospitals (immuneel.com media page).

The surprise is less about diversification and more about its absence: a company that has raised capital from investors as different as a Middle Eastern strategic backer and a retail-investing platform’s venture arm is still, six years after incorporation, running its entire commercial business on one product treating roughly 100 patients a year.

The risks

• Single-product concentration: with all disclosed revenue tied to Qartemi for one indication, any manufacturing disruption, adverse-event finding, or pricing intervention has an outsized effect on the business — at an annual patient base in the low hundreds (Medical Dialogues, June 2026), losing even a handful of treatment slots moves the revenue line materially.
• A later, costlier entry than its closest rival: ImmunoACT’s NexCAR19 was approved roughly 15 months before Qartemi (cancer.gov, 2024), is priced lower — around $50,000 initially, since reduced to roughly ₹30 lakh (cancer.gov; IndiaMedToday) — and had already treated over 350 patients across 70 hospitals, generating FY25 revenue of ₹62 crore against Immuneel’s ₹9.9 crore (IndiaMedToday). Hospitals and oncologists that built referral pathways around the earlier entrant are a harder pool to win back.
• Dependence on in-licensed IP and continued capital: Qartemi’s underlying CAR-T construct, ARI-0001/IMN-003A, was licensed from Hospital Clínic de Barcelona rather than developed in-house from scratch (PressInsider, January 2025), and the company’s FY23 loss of ₹39 crore against a revenue base that only reached ₹9.9 crore two years later shows a cash-burn profile that has required three funding rounds since 2022 to sustain (Entrackr).

The takeaway

Cutting the price of an expensive therapy by roughly 90% does not automatically create a market for it on day one. Immuneel proved the cost side of the equation — in-licensing a working CAR-T construct and manufacturing it inside Indian hospitals instead of importing a finished product — but regulatory review, trial recruitment and hospital referral habits all move on their own, slower timelines. By the time Qartemi reached patients in January 2025, a domestic rival had already set the reference price and captured the early patient flow. Being right about how to make something affordable is not the same as being first to convert that affordability into revenue.

Frequently asked questions

What does Immuneel Therapeutics do?

Immuneel manufactures and sells CAR-T cell therapies for blood cancer. Its commercial product, Qartemi, treats adults with relapsed or refractory B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma and is manufactured at the company’s Bengaluru facility (immuneel.com).

Who founded Immuneel Therapeutics?

Immuneel was co-founded by Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (Executive Chairperson of Biocon), oncologist and author Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Dr Kush M Parmar, Managing Partner at 5AM Ventures. It was incorporated in December 2018 (Tofler MCA record; Able India, April 2022).

Is Qartemi India’s first CAR-T cell therapy?

No. ImmunoACT’s NexCAR19 was approved by India’s drug regulator, CDSCO, in October 2023 and is described by the US National Cancer Institute as India’s first approved CAR-T cell therapy (cancer.gov, 2024). Qartemi, from Immuneel, followed in January 2025 and is described in company materials as India’s first “global” CAR-T cell therapy, referring to its internationally licensed construct.

How much does Qartemi cost?

Reported pricing has varied by source and time period: Immuneel’s January 2025 launch materials cited ₹51–60 lakh per patient, while media coverage around its June 2026 funding round cited a lower ₹35–40 lakh per patient. Both figures are described as roughly a tenth of the $350,000–$700,000 charged for comparable CAR-T therapies in the US.

How much funding has Immuneel Therapeutics raised, and is it profitable?

Immuneel has raised more than $37 million across a 2022 Series A, a 2024 strategic investment from Taiba Middle East FZ LLC, and a June 2026 Series B (Inc42; Entrackr). It is not profitable: its FY23 net loss was ₹39 crore, and while FY25 revenue grew to ₹9.9 crore, more recent profit or loss figures have not been independently disclosed.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Entrackr, “Exclusive: Kiran Mazumdar Shaw’s Immuneel Therapeutics raises Rs 100 Cr” — July 2024
• Entrackr, “Immuneel Therapeutics raises over Rs 100 Cr in Series B” — June 2026
• Medical Dialogues, “Kiran Shaw Backed Cancer Therapy Startup Immuneel Secures Rs 100 Crore in Series B Funding” — June 2026
• Indian Startup News, “Immuneel Therapeutics raises over Rs 100 crore to scale CAR-T cancer therapy, global expansion” — June 2026
• Immuneel Therapeutics, company media page (immuneel.com/media) — accessed September 2026
• Immuneel Therapeutics, company page (immuneel.com/company) — accessed September 2026
• Able India (company release), “Biotech start-up Immuneel Therapeutics announces India’s first Phase II patient trials for CAR-T cancer therapies alongside a USD 15 million Series A financing” — April 2022
• Labiotech.eu, “Immuneel Therapeutics raises $15M and starts patient trials for CAR-T cancer therapies” — 2022
• PressInsider, “Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw-backed Immuneel launches blood cancer therapy” — January 2025
• Tofler, Immuneel Therapeutics Private Limited company financial record, CIN U24230KA2018PTC119691 — accessed September 2026
• Inc42, “Immuneel Therapeutics — Funding & Revenue” company financial tracker — accessed September 2026
• National Cancer Institute (cancer.gov), “NexCAR19 CAR T-cell Therapy for Blood Cancers: An India-NCI Collaboration” — 2024
• IndiaMedToday, “India’s CAR-T Leap: Affordable Cancer Therapy Boosts Profits and Access” — 2025

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