India, June 4 -- When Dr Gaurav Kharya returned to India in 2014 after training at Newcastle and Imperial College London, he carried a quiet frustration. As a pediatric blood cancer specialist, he had spent years watching hospitals abroad offer cutting-edge cell and gene therapies as outright cures, while in India, patients made do with painkillers and basic chemotherapy.

Over half a decade later, a meeting with Dr Tanveer Ahmad, a researcher in cancer cell engineering, led to the establishment of Cellogen Therapeutics, a cellular engineering and gene therapy startup.

It develops next‑generation therapies utilising Chimeric Antigen Receptor T (CAR-T) cells to treat cancers and blood disorders with an aim to make life-saving therap...