HiMedia is striving in service of the nation

Almost five decades ago, Dr Gangadhar M Warke, founder and CMD; his better half, Saroj G Warke, co-founder and director, IT, and his younger brother, Vishnu M Warke, co-founder and director, sales and marketing, along with the blessings of their eldest brother, the late TM Warke, started HiMedia with the sole aim of making India selfsufficient in the field of biosciences.

Build in India
At the time, the need of the hour was to prove that India could develop and manufacture world class microbiological products indigenously, despite the stiff competition posed by reputed American and British MNCs.


Instead of chasing turnover, Dr Warke and his family were focused on supporting the Indian scientific/research fraternity by providing microbiological products in an accessible and affordable manner. They began by manufacturing microbiology culture media, which was used for growing microorganisms in pharmaceuticals, hospitals and blood culturing purposes in laboratories.

HiMedia excelled so much in the development, manufacture and supply of these products, that they soon started parallelly exporting over 10,000 bioscience-based products to more than 150 countries, with operational headquarters in Europe, Brazil and USA.

Evolve in India
Under the able leadership of the founding trio and the second generat ion of technocrats, HiMedia has diversified into eight key segments that cover the entire gamut of life sciences — microbiology, cell biology, plant tissue culture, molecular biology, chemicals and biochemicals, l aborator y con sumables, instruments and hydroponics.

Today, HiMedia is ranked globally amongst the top three microbiology media manufacturers with best-inclass manufacturing infrastructure and unique products such as veg culture media (HiVeg™) replacing animal-origin components. Their work has won many national as well as international awards.

Achieve in India
Under Saroj Warke’s guidance, the IT team of HiMedia has been exploring exciting innovations such as an RFID- enabled smart warehouse (fully digital warehouse), a smart laboratory (Internet of Things, IoT) and smart invoicing, while developing new AI and machine learning products within lifesciences. Other family members ably support these initiatives by managing back-end operations and the company’s ef forts in the production and manufacturing plants.

The indigenous development of vegetable-based peptones and media under the brand name HiVeg™ has been one of Dr Rahul Warke’s (director, R&D Microbiology) most remarkable breakthrough achievements. Today, HiMedia offers a range of over 1,500 animal free culture media under the umbrella brand of HiVeg™ and 20 vegetable hydrolysates as raw material for HiVeg™ media.

Further, he has pioneered the development of HiCynth™ (chemically defined microbiology culture media), devoid of animal as well as vegetable proteins. Faced with a growing demand for USFDAapproved products, Dr Rahul took it as an opportunity to launch readyprepared media plates and other liquid media. Under his leadership, HiMedia has also developed the widest range of HiCrome™ (chromogenic) media in the world.

Dr Vishal and Dr Priti Warke, the next-gen directors of R&D who successfully established the cell biology, plant tissue culture, and hydroponics wings of the business, have received the ‘BIRAC Innovator Award 2020’ in the vaccines and drug delivery category by Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC). They have developed many products including chemically-defined, serum-free media for vaccine and biopharma production along with primary and stem cell media for the global market. They have won several government-funded projects for supporting the ‘Makein-India’ movement and reducing the burden of disease in the country and are collaborating globally to develop new products in the field of cultured meat and BIoinks for 3D-Bioprinting.

The molecular biology division, under the leadership of the techno commercial brother-sister duo of Dr Rajas Warke and Dr Kavita Khadke, has risen to new heights post-Covid as the main supplier for nucleic acid extraction kits, RT-PCR kits and automated instruments.

The main highlight was their unique viral RNA extraction kits which allowed 96 samples to be processed in 11 minutes, greatly aiding the Indian Covid diagnostic sector. They develop products related to genomics, proteomics and specialised lab instruments along with genomebased sequencing services used for clinical diagnostics, forensics, biopharmaceuticals and research. Sheetal Warke, forming the second generation of IT directors, has developed a niche IT-based forensic human identification software, driving the country towards ‘Atmanirbhar’ in the growing molecular diagnostic sector.

Five decades later, the rich Warke family legacy — ‘Spirit of Innovation’ – lives on and is being cult ivated in the youngest generation.