Differentiated Products Is The Way Forward For Indian Drug Makers: Pankaj Patel

This is time for Indian generic drug makers to aggressively focus on capabilities for developing differentiated products to sustain growth in a challenging era, which sees price erosion, significantly increasing competition and more stringent regulations in the global market, said Pankaj R Patel, chairman, Cadila Healthcare, and president, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industries.

Differentiated products not only offer better margin but also helps companies to create a niche in the market with less competition and even to build stronger business with comparatively smaller marketing infrastructure and team, Patel said while delivering his key note address as the chief guest at the Businessworld-Yes Bank Life Sciences Forum 2017 held in Mumbai on Friday, July 28.

Businessworld Life Science Forum was a unique knowledge initiative conceived for thought leaders from pharmaceuticals and biopharmaceuticals to further drive sectoral business growth and leverage the resurgence of the Indian economy. The forum, which was attended by top, senior and middle management professionals and entrepreneurs from the industry, brought together business leaders from these sectors and help focus attention on the sector, build on its natural advantages, highlight and help remove roadblocks if any, and recommend suitable policy measures that would catalyse the sector’s growth.

The Forum’s theme this year was ‘Indian pharma transition from generics to complex/niche generics to re-align itself and prepare for the next big leap’. 

Currently, the pharmaceutical industry is putting best efforts to re-align itself and prepare for a big leap in the high value markets as Indian firms are present in these market mostly in the traditional generics segment. While the opportunity to grow and expand in specialty generic area is huge, the Forum was aiming at bringing together top the Indian pharma players operating to have an involved discussion on the emerging trends of the sector.

Talking about the quality issues currently being associated with several of India drug makers in a panel discussion, S M Mudda, Director, Global Strategy (Technical), Micro Labs, said that, “We should create our own quality management system, so that we can make ourselves robust in our operations.”

According to Sundeep Bambolkar, Joint Managing Director, Indoco Remedies, over the years, the entire manufacturing process in the industry has become extremely different from the traditional and it is thus important that we must take extra care for quality.

Explaining the way to become a successful player, Dr Ranjana Pathak, Global Head – Quality at CIPLA, suggested it is the three key aspects such as training,  talent and capabilities of people who work in an organisation basically touch the product and processes.

Murtaza Khorakiwala, Managing Director, Wockhardt, said in fire side discussion titled “Indian pharmaceutical Industry 2030 – The Way Forward’ moderated by Amit Kumar, Group President and  Country Head, Corporate Banking, YES Bank, said the next decade will be an era of innovation in the Indian pharmaceutical industry.

“The Indian pharmaceutical industry witnessed a host of policy challenges, which forced the industry to engage in a series of discussions with the government,” said Deepnath Roy Chowdhury, MD, Strassenburg Pharmaceuticals Ltd., and National President, IDMA.

Source: http://businessworld.in/article/Differentiated-Products-Is-The-Way-Forward-For-Indian-Drug-Makers-Pankaj-Patel/29-07-2017-123118/