Then came the fourth trial.

Batch #V-423: Bioavailability at 82.3%.

For the next 72 hours, Veriton Pharma’s usually sterile R&D lab looked like a medieval apothecary. They sourced pharmaceutical-grade beeswax. They synthesized a purified analog of the kodampuli polysaccharide. The junior chemists thought Arjun had lost his mind. The head of quality assurance threatened to resign.

That night, the factory in Baddi ran its first commercial batch. And in a small clinic in Kerala, a dusty portrait of an old compounder seemed to smile.

Arjun knew it wasn’t about safety. It was about a patent. The rival had a synthetic polymer coating under patent. Veriton’s beeswax-and-gum solution circumvented it, threatening their monopoly.

Arjun opened it. The handwriting was in faded Malayalam, but the diagrams were universal. It showed a crude, three-layered tablet. Not a modern matrix system, but a sandwich : a slow-release core, a protective gum from the local kodampuli fruit, and a waxy outer shell made from refined beeswax.

The hearing was held in a stuffy conference room in Delhi. The regulator, an old-school pharmacologist named Dr. Sharma, listened to both sides. The rival’s lawyers cited reams of EU regulations. Arjun’s lawyer stammered about tradition and bioequivalence.