Meet Raj Mantena, a pharma titan hosting a star-studded Udaipur wedding for his daughter
For those who don’t know their names, the attendees and artists included Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber, Ranveer Singh, Hrithik Roshan, Varun Dhavan, Kriti Sanon, Madhuri Dixit and Karan Johar. Donald Trump Jr. was there too.
So who is Raj Mantena and how did the world miss his meteoric rise? The reclusive Florida-based, Indian-born businessman is little known outside his inner circle of friends in the pharmaceutical hub of Hyderabad. Apparently not anymore.
ET spoke to people who knew him well to piece together a picture of the man behind this latest and most surprising spectacle that rivaled other recent wedding celebrations.
Predicting the Future
“Raju has great taste for luxury. He has a car museum at his home in Manalapan (Florida) and has a bar in his basement that only the elite would consider,” a person told ET.
A serial healthcare entrepreneur, Mantena studied computer science in India and then moved to the United States, where he earned a pharmacy degree. His wealth, said to be billions of dollars, stems from the intersection of these two different fields of science, which have complemented each other over time. Early breakthroughs in medicine, particularly cancer treatments, the use of digital technology in healthcare, and rapid changes in reimbursement models in the United States fueled Mantena’s entrepreneurial vision. He entered businesses, scaled them to a certain size, and sold them to large corporations at rich valuations. From cloud-based healthcare solutions for precision medicine through Integra Connect to selling low-priced generic drugs as part of Ingenus Pharmaceuticals, Mantena’s business continues to boom.
Integra Connect says it is a value-based precision medicine company that transforms real-world data into deep insights in cancer treatment. As part of its oncology care model, Integra says it has generated $260 million in value-based care revenue and over $100 million in shared savings for participating companies.
OncoScripts, an oncology-focused pharmacy founded by Mantena in the ’90s, was later acquired by a subsidiary of pharmaceutical distribution company Cardinal Health.
Mantena subsequently founded the International Oncology Network, a group purchasing and oncology community network that was acquired by AmerisourceBergen (now Cencora) in 2001. He later founded ICORE Healthcare, a provider of health plans, to manage cost trends in specialty drugs and sold the venture to Magellan Health Services in 2006 for more than $200 million.
House Ties
While the businesses grew in the United States, in India Mantena further deepened his connections with the political circles of Andhra Pradesh. “The Mantena family is related to the Gokaraju family, which holds political weight in Andhra Pradesh,” said a person from Hyderabad.
Many senior executives in the US and Indian pharmaceutical industries said they had not heard much about the man.
“I don’t recall seeing a representative from Integra Connect at an international conference on precision medicine in Orlando recently,” said a senior business development executive in oncology. Similar notes came from another biotech entrepreneur who has been in San Francisco for more than three decades.
Ingenus’ Nov. 13 announcement showed that the company has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its only generic equivalent of Premarin, a tablet used to treat osteoporosis and some effects of menopause.
Mantena’s profile on LinkedIn shows only a few connections, and he is understood to use the networking site sparingly.
However, the extravagant festivities in Udaipur will ensure that the name is not easily forgotten.
