In the 26th century, the medicinal market is dominated by two megacorporations: Vey-Med and Zeng-Hu, both having deep ties to several other prominent megacorporations, such as Nanotrasen itself. Kynde Group Pharmaceuticals likes to present itself as the underdog to these two corporations, the "affordable" option to the common working person, a newcomer whose innovations are leaving behind Vey-Med and Zeng-Hu's tired (and true) techniques. Kynde is not an underdog, however. It is an iceberg, with its surface only concealing a vast web of criminal activities, tied deeply to its past connections.
History
Kynde Group Pharmaceuticals is mostly known as a new corporation formed around the mid-2550s. Those who have kept up with corporate history know it is the successor to Waffle Co, a former Syndicate member. Kynde's history starts with the end of Waffle Co's, the food-manufacturing giant left in shambles following their departure from the Syndicate near the end of the Phoron War. Waffle had departed the Syndicate upon seeing the writing on the wall, expecting that they would be able to quietly return to their old products of food mixes and pastries.
It didn't take long to discover that Waffle Co was verging on bankruptcy due to the amount of money they had poured into their biotechnical research and mind-control projects. Waffle began to steadily transition their internal funding back to their more mundane products, but this led to them being unable to capitalize on the loss of Nanotrasen's monopoly on phoron, simply lacking the finances to explore the possibilities afforded by the resouce they had spilled so much blood over.
Publicly, it's considered that layoffs and decreasing quality control led to a rash of poisonings that further damaged Waffle's brand image, resulting in massive court payouts and an annihilation of Waffle's public image overnight. It is, however, rumored that Donk Co, ironically, put their acquired knowledge from the Syndicate to use, utilizing saboteurs within Waffle in the same way Waffle had prior to the Phoron War. This escalated into a campaign by Donk Co to intimidate Waffle with newly rehired private military companies, making it seem as if a military build-up was imminent, one that could mark the beginning of a Second Waffle War.
Facing either finanical ruin or a hostile takeover from Donk Co, Waffle Co made a Faustian bargain with Donk Co, who purchased all of Waffle Co's food manufacturing capabilities, ensuring that Waffle was no longer a threat to Donk Co in the food market. Expectedly, a wave of layoffs followed as Waffle Co axed anyone that wasn't working in the aforementioned biotech and mind-control projects. With both of these sectors being largely unknown to both the public and Waffle Co's average employee, it appeared as if the corporation was preparing to shut down entirely, especially as it was now without much equipment and manpower.
It was around this time that Waffle Co's then-CEO resigned, giving their position over to Quincy Kynde, an executive who had risen to the upper echelons of the company during the Phoron War. Kynde had been at the helm of Waffle Co's research branch throughout the Phoron War, and had already fought to keep departments researching into biochemical and mind-alteration projects from being axed once the war ended, seeing potential for them in gaining customers back for Waffle. Kynde wasted no time in pouring what little money Waffle had left into these same projects, confident that a publicly marketable breakthrough could be discovered.
His instincts bore fruit as Waffle Co began pushing out products for the civilian pharmaceutical market, leading to a swift re-branding to Kynde Group Pharmaceuticals to add an air of legitimacy to their products. While unable to directly compete with Vey-Med and Zeng-Hu in its early history, Waffle Co could acquire sales from those who could afford neither company, leading to a rapid development. The profits from these early ventures allowed Kynde to seize a well of phoron in 2559, already beginning efforts to turn this miracle element into another potential medical avenue, thus securing a stable position on the market for the time being.
Modern Day
Even after their complete restructuring, Kynde has failed to make a lasting impact on the medical goods market. The corporate giants of Vey-Med and Zeng-Hu still dominate the industry, with Kynde being only a step above even smaller, less legitimate pharmaceutical companies. Their existence has been largely ignored by Nanotrasen, who refuses to do any business with the former Syndicate corporation. Likewise, Donk Co has expressed no interest in Kynde, and vice versa, the former food-manufacturing corporation seemingly content to continue on in its current course as a medicinal company first and foremost. Much of Kynde's current business comes down to smaller pharmaceutical-stocking chains and frontier planets, as well as conducting business with corporations who have been blacklisted from doing business with Zeng-Hu for one reason or another.
That is only the surface of Kynde's current activities, however, as the new corporation proves to be even more rotten than Waffle Co during its time in the Syndicate. With resources and personnel leftover from their Syndicate days, Kynde uses their assets as a way of facilitating numerous illegal activities in the underground crime world. Much of Kynde's actual research into biotechnology is highly unethical, being partly to secure more civilian products, and partly to benefit their aforementioned illegal market. It's currently unknown how many of Waffle Co's current executives are fully aware of these activities, due to a degree of separation between their civilian manufacturing and their more secretive products, but given Quincy Kynde's own history with the Syndicate, it's very likely that almost, if not all, of these activities pass by his desk at some point and gain his personal seal of approval.
Ethos
Publicly, Kynde is about getting affordable but effective medicine out into as many hands as it can. As mentioned before, this typically means their medicine ends up with smaller retailer chains and local pharmacies, making their products a staple of life on many planets (almost like during the better days of Waffle Co) but without the profound spread and reputation of Vey-Med or Zeng Hu. What few corporate partners Kynde has are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, and Kynde seems mostly uninterested in playing corporate politics, at least at the moment.
Its criminal activities, meanwhile, are not dissimilar to what Waffle Co engaged in near the end of the Phoron War, albeit now marketed instead of being performed for a tactical purpose. Kynde happily sells many of its infiltrators and the related technology to various smaller corporations and political entities across space, causing more than a few revolutions to crop up among previously stable corporate factories or urban areas. Likewise, assassinations, theft, and sabotage have all been services offered by veteran Phoron War infiltrators and a newer generation trained by Kynde itself. The majority of the money, and power, of the corporation rests in these activities, with their pharmaceutical ventures being little more than a public face for these activities. Given the amount of money and resources coming from Kynde's illegal dealings, it has set up numerous shell companies and ties to proxy groups in order to mask the amount of financial and logistical power they hold.
Criminal Activities
Beyond their already aforementioned business dealings with various corporations and both state and nonstate actors alike, Kynde pursues much of its research through highly illegal experimentation on sapients from various regions of space. While they've since given up the borderline slave trading that was common with Gorlex Manufacturing near the latter years of the Phoron War, Kynde currently exports an altered version of their brainwashing technology in various black markets across space. While these are less technologically advanced to preserve Kynde's own knowledge from being too "public" they retain their capabilities of being used to coerce otherwise unwilling subjects into committing acts they otherwise would not.
Kynde has become heavily involved in the drug trade as well, using their resources to push out highly addictive substances for numerous cartels and drug organizations. Naturally, this business model lets Kynde secure its own cut of the profits, bringing in a steady source of relatively low risk revenue. The benefit of Kynde producing these substances is that local authorities very rarely manage to raid Kynde production centers, especially as they appear to be lines for Kynde's public markets. If that fails, Kynde doesn't hesitate to bribe, intimidate, or assassinate anyone who gets too close to investigating Kynde's property. Though most of the time Kynde relies on shell companies to avoid tarnishing its reputation, even if there's little to tarnish there.
This has allowed Kynde to maintain an indirect stranglehold over certain colonies and even a small number of systems as the population becomes reliant on heavily addictive substances and the resulting drug trade. Ironically, the addiction facing these colonies allows Kynde to market their services through hospitals and treatment centers, being far more affordable to less economically developed nations compared to Vey-Med and Zeng-Hu. However, both only serve as revolving doors for addicts, offering only short-term treatment to ensure Kynde does not lose any potential "customers." The influence this grants Kynde over certain regions of space allows them to open further illicit markets, alongside paying officials to look the other way whenever people "disappear" to end up as Kynde test subjects.