Not one of the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination cared a lot about Vivek Ramaswamy six months in the past, when the 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur launched his marketing campaign with a promise to conquer “the woke left”.

However via a mix of contrarian instincts, relentless campaigning and fealty to frontrunner Donald Trump, Ramaswamy has capitalised on his self-styled picture as a supremely profitable businessman to the purpose the place he now comes second in some Republican major opinion polls.

His risk to others vying to be the occasion’s nominee was on show at this week’s debate in Wisconsin, the place he was the goal of sustained assaults from rivals.

Ramaswamy has tried to fashion himself as a youthful Trump with much less baggage — a self-made businessman who has constructed a web value of almost a billion {dollars}, in keeping with Forbes. “I’m not a politician . . . I’m an entrepreneur,” he stated at this week’s debate. “My mother and father got here to this nation with no cash 40 years in the past. I’ve gone on to discovered multibillion-dollar firms.”

His marketing campaign has been marked by an inclination to make impractical guarantees, akin to a pledge to fireplace 75 per cent of Federal authorities staff in his first time period. That has drawn unflattering comparisons to his time as a biotech entrepreneur, when he was vulnerable to accusations of hype.

Ramaswamy earned a part of his fortune by touting the promise of an experimental Alzheimer’s medication he acquired from GSK for simply $5mn in 2015. In non-public, executives on the British pharma firm had been scathing in regards to the drug’s prospects, arguing they might not have parted with the molecule for such a small sum if it had any probability of success.

He bought the medication through Roivant, his drug growth group, earlier than making a subsidiary named Axovant to develop it. Axovant filed for an preliminary public providing that raised $315mn within the largest biotech flotation on report, securing a valuation of $3bn after the primary day of buying and selling.

Then aged simply 30, Ramaswamy promised to unearth different forgotten compounds and switch Roivant into what he described because the “Berkshire Hathaway of drug growth”. In doing so, he would generate “the very best return on funding endeavour ever taken up within the pharmaceutical business”.

The valuation of Roivant, then a privately-held firm, elevated after the IPO and Ramaswamy in 2015 offered a part of his stake to Viking International Buyers. His tax return for that 12 months exhibits $37mn in capital features.

Nonetheless, as GSK had privately predicted, the medication was a flop and in 2017 it failed scientific trials, inflicting Axovant’s shares to break down. Roviant’s holding firm construction insulated it from the worst of the crash however different traders misplaced hundreds of thousands of {dollars}. Earlier this 12 months, shareholders of Axovant, since renamed SioGene, voted to liquidate and dissolve the corporate.

“Ramaswamy definitely didn’t introduce hype into the biopharma IPO sphere,” stated Derek Lowe, a pharmaceutical researcher and commentator. “There may be at all times hype there however it simply appeared like an egregious quantity of it, particularly for somebody who had completely no background in anyway in any of these things.”

Nonetheless, Paul Davis, who shared a dorm with Ramaswamy whereas at Harvard and is now Roivant’s head of communications, stated he was “devastated” by the failure. “It was brutal for him as a result of he felt he had staked his popularity on this specific programme . . . He undoubtedly felt he had let down the traders who had invested in him.”

In an announcement to the Monetary Instances, Ramaswamy stated: “I developed an Alzheimer’s drug. Like 99.7 per cent of all medication examined for Alzheimer’s illness, it failed. That was a tough expertise for me. However hardship isn’t the identical factor as victimhood. Victimhood is a alternative, and I selected to be victorious as a substitute.”

That victory is obvious, argues Ramaswamy, in the truth that underneath his management Roivant and its subsidiaries developed 5 medication that subsequently went on to safe approval from the US Meals and Drug Administration. It’s, he advised the FT, “the most effective observe data for a brand new biotech firm in trendy US historical past”, including: “that’s how I made my cash”.

In September 2019, Roivant offered 5 of its most promising subsidiaries to Japan’s Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma in a blockbuster $3bn deal. Ramaswamy’s tax return for 2020 exhibits he made capital features value $174.5mn.

But the truth that Ramaswamy owes his wealth to the regulatory imprimatur of the FDA has irked some former associates given his marketing campaign pledge to intestine what he describes as a “corrupt” company.

“This isn’t the Vivek that I knew,” stated Don Berwick, a former administrator of the US Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid, who resigned as a member of Roivant’s advisory board in 2021. “I don’t know the place that change got here from. It marks to me a deep hypocrisy, untrustworthiness. He both was not being sincere with us within the advisory group to his true beliefs or is being calculating and cynical.”

Ramaswamy dismissed Berwick’s criticism as “politically motivated”, declaring he headed up CMS throughout Barack Obama’s administration.

After making a fortune in biotech, Ramaswamy turned his consideration to fund administration. In January 2021, he stood down as Roivant’s chief govt and the next 12 months launched Try Asset Administration, an “anti-woke” cash supervisor. Backed by Republican financiers Peter Thiel and Howard Lutnick, Try aimed to capitalise on the backlash in opposition to firms making an attempt to deal with local weather change and diversify their workplaces.

In an interview with the FT in Iowa final month, Ramaswamy described the connection between the Republican occasion and company America as “fraught”.

“There’s a backlash in opposition to firms utilizing industrial energy to advance political and social agendas,” he stated.

When requested about shifting from the enterprise world to the marketing campaign path, Ramaswamy stated: “The half about this has been most rewarding for me is talking my thoughts and not using a filter. That’s what I’ve been doing on this marketing campaign. And I wasn’t free to try this in my life in company America.”

Try’s largest fund, DRLL tracks an index of vitality shares and costs 41 foundation factors, quadruple market chief State Avenue. Try had attracted $600mn by the point Ramaswamy stepped down as CEO to run for president. He nonetheless owns a big stake.

Ramaswamy and Try had been not too long ago sued in New Jersey by a former worker who contends she was fired for resisting the usage of advertising supplies that improperly promised future returns. Final 12 months DRLL’s advertising literature stated that if firms had been free of ESG issues “US vitality shares have room to understand 2-3x in worth over the subsequent 12-24 months”.

Try stated the previous “worker had been terminated for underperformance” including that the corporate “intends to vigorously defend itself in opposition to this lawsuit”.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for Ramaswamy’s marketing campaign, stated: “The timing of those lawsuits is very suspicious and reeks of opportunism. Vivek fired underperformers, as he’ll within the federal authorities.”