Cellogen Therapeutics is building lower-cost CAR-T and gene therapies for cancer and blood disorders, and it has now pulled in ₹20 crore from Kotak Alternate Asset Managers. The big problem it’s chasing is brutally simple: existing CAR-T treatment can cost $500,000 to $700,000, which puts it out of reach for most patients. Founded in 2021 by Dr. Gaurav Kharya and Dr. Tanveer Ahmad, the company wants to push that price down to $60,000 to $70,000. That’s a huge claim.
What does Cellogen Therapeutics actually build?
Cellogen Therapeutics is a cell and gene therapy startup working on next-generation CAR-T treatments that try to solve two old problems in cancer immunotherapy: relapse after the cancer stops showing a single target, and weak long-term persistence of the modified T cells. For a patient, the treatment flow still follows the familiar CAR-T route. Immune cells are collected and engineered, expanded in a GMP setup, and infused back. The difference is in the design of the CAR itself.
Instead of sticking to a one-marker attack, Cellogen has built bispecific CAR-T constructs that go after 2 tumor antigens at once. Its work has centered on combinations such as CD19-CD20 and CD19-CD22. It has also tested different co-stimulatory domain mixes including CD28, 4-1BB, ICOS, and OX40. That’s the company’s core technical bet: if cancer slips past one marker, the second target gives the therapy another shot at killing it.
And it didn’t get there by tinkering around the edges. Cellogen designed almost 50 CAR constructs in preclinical work, narrowed that down to 2 better-performing candidates, and then pushed those into animal studies. Its preclinical work points to stronger tumor kill, proliferation, and persistence than standard CD19-focused second-generation CAR-T approaches. The science is interesting. The hard part, as always, is proving that in humans.
There’s a second product thread here too. Beyond cancer, Cellogen is building gene-editing programmes for beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease. The approach targets BCL11A to recreate mutations associated with hereditary persistence of fetal hemoglobin, using lentiviral and CRISPR-based methods. In plain English: it’s trying to switch fetal hemoglobin back on, because higher HbF levels can blunt disease severity in both conditions.
Who founded Cellogen Therapeutics and what has it done so far?
The founding story
Cellogen was established on 8 June 2021. Dr. Gaurav Kharya and Dr. Tanveer Ahmad started the company to build cell and gene therapies inside India instead of depending on imported science and imported pricing. That shows up in the company’s pitch pretty clearly — it isn’t just trying to make CAR-T work. It’s trying to make it local enough and cheap enough to actually get used.
The company began with hematological cancers and blood disorders, then expanded its pipeline into hemoglobinopathies. It also built research ties early, including collaborations with CSIR-IGIB in Delhi, DBT-RCB in Faridabad, CSIR-IICB in Kolkata, and later CMC Vellore for clinical progress.
Why the founder-market fit is real
Kharya brings actual bedside credibility to this. He’s a pediatric hematology, oncology, and immunology specialist who has led bone marrow transplant and cellular therapy work in India. Before Cellogen, he built deep experience in stem cell transplant, sickle cell disease, and blood cancers, and he has worked on more than 1,000 transplants across different conditions. He’s also been involved in CAR-T and gene-therapy research for hemoglobin disorders. That makes this startup feel less like a financial bet dressed up as science and more like a clinician trying to fix a broken cost structure.
That matters because cell therapy companies don’t just need a cool slide deck. They need someone who understands toxicities and manufacturing constraints. Patient selection matters too. So do donor issues and what happens when a trial protocol meets a real hospital.
Early signals and product status
Cellogen is still early. Its lead CAR-T programme is moving toward Phase I human clinical trials, subject to regulatory approvals, in collaboration with CMC Vellore. In 2025, it also secured a patent for its CAR-T platform, which gives it some defensibility as it inches toward the clinic.
The public team page shows a bench-heavy organisation, with staff across manufacturing, QC, QA, R&D, computational biology, and operations. That’s what you want to see from a biotech trying to get out of the lab and into regulated production. Not flashy. Useful.
The funding stack
The fresh capital came from Kotak Alts through Kotak Life Sciences Fund I, or KLSF-I. Cellogen will use the money to advance CAR-T clinical programmes, expand the gene therapy pipeline, and build out GMP-compliant manufacturing plus regulatory capability.
This didn’t come out of nowhere. Natco Pharma had already bought a stake of a little over 5% in Cellogen for ₹15 crore. KLSF-I itself isn’t a one-off vehicle built around a single hot theme. The fund marked its first close in January 2025 at ₹250 crore, with backing from family offices, ultra-high-net-worth individuals, industry veterans, and institutions. It invests across life sciences and medical devices. Digital health, diagnostics and delivery, and consumer wellness are also in scope. In February 2026, it also led a ₹65 crore round in ZeroHarm Sciences alongside Alkemi Growth Capital.
Can Cellogen beat other India CAR-T companies?
That won’t be easy.
ImmunoACT is already much farther down the road. It won market authorization for NexCAR19 in 2023, moved into commercial infusion after that, and has been building a wider hospital network since. Immuneel has also spent years building integrated cell therapy infrastructure in Bengaluru, with a facility designed around autologous cell therapies including CAR-T for leukemia and lymphoma.
So where does Cellogen try to stand apart? On 2 things: price and design.
On price, it wants to bring therapy down toward $60,000 to $70,000. On design, it’s using dual-antigen targeting to reduce relapse risk compared with older single-target CAR-T products. If that holds up clinically, investors aren’t just backing another Indian CAR-T hopeful. They’re backing a version that could compete by being both cheaper and more resilient against antigen escape.
Why are investors backing Cellogen Therapeutics now?
Because this round is less about scale-up vanity and more about crossing the ugliest part of biotech company building.
Cellogen now has enough backing to push work that investors usually treat as make-or-break: clinical prep, GMP manufacturing, and regulatory execution. Those are the expensive, boring, absolutely unavoidable pieces that separate a science project from a therapy company. A lot of startups look exciting right until they hit this wall.
The timing lines up with Cellogen’s own roadmap. It already has preclinical data, institutional research partnerships, a patent, and a clinical collaboration with CMC Vellore. That doesn’t guarantee success. It does mean the company has moved past the “interesting hypothesis” stage.
Kotak’s interest also tells you something. This isn’t tourist capital chasing biotech because it sounds futuristic. KLSF-I is built for early- and growth-stage healthcare bets. So the thesis here looks pretty direct: India needs advanced therapies that don’t import Western price tags, and Cellogen might be one of the teams able to build that locally.
How big is the India CAR-T therapy market?
Pretty big already. And still early.
India’s CAR-T cell therapy market was valued at about $534.8 million in 2024 and is projected to reach roughly $1.22 billion by 2033. That’s not small niche-science money anymore. It’s the kind of number that starts attracting serious manufacturing, clinical, and institutional capital.
The broader biotech setup in India also helps. The country now has more than 11,000 biotech startups, and the policy mood has shifted toward higher-value biopharma rather than just generic scale. In the Union Budget for 2026-27, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the Biopharma SHAKTI scheme with an outlay of ₹10,000 crore over 5 years. The plan includes support for talent and clinical infrastructure. It also aims to strengthen regulatory capacity, with a nationwide network of 1,000-plus accredited clinical trial sites in view.
That doesn’t magically solve cell therapy manufacturing, reimbursement, or hospital readiness.
But it does mean startups like Cellogen are launching into a market with some policy tailwind behind it.
What to watch next for Cellogen Therapeutics
Cellogen Therapeutics has a sharp pitch: better CAR-T design and far lower pricing. It also has an India-first manufacturing mindset. That’s compelling. It’s also unproven where it matters most — in human data.
So the next real checkpoint isn’t another funding headline. It’s whether Cellogen can get into the clinic, clear regulatory hurdles, and show that its dual-antigen CAR-T logic translates into durable outcomes for patients.
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FAQ
– What funding did Cellogen Therapeutics raise?
Cellogen Therapeutics raised ₹20 crore from Kotak Alternate Asset Managers. The investment was made through Kotak Life Sciences Fund I, and it followed an earlier ₹15 crore investment from Natco Pharma, which gave Natco a stake of a little over 5% in the company.
– How does Cellogen Therapeutics’ CAR-T platform work?
Cellogen is developing CAR-T therapies that target 2 cancer markers instead of just 1. Its lead constructs focus on combinations such as CD19-CD20 and CD19-CD22, which are meant to reduce relapse caused by antigen escape and improve how long the engineered T cells stay active.
– Who founded Cellogen Therapeutics?
Cellogen was founded in 2021 by Dr. Gaurav Kharya and Dr. Tanveer Ahmad. Kharya is a pediatric hematology and bone marrow transplant specialist with deep experience in blood disorders, stem cell transplant, and cellular therapy, which gives the company unusually strong clinical grounding for an early-stage biotech.
– Is Cellogen Therapeutics in the CAR-T therapy market or the gene therapy market?
It’s in both. Cellogen’s main focus today is CAR-T therapy for cancers, but it’s also building gene-editing programmes for beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease, which puts it squarely inside the broader cell and gene therapy category.
