Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad   

Pharma sector urged to focus on discovery of drugs

HYDERABAD: Drugs Controller-General of India M.Venkateswarlu has urged the pharma industry to move from reverse engineering to discovery of drugs for curing diseases prevalent in developing countries.

He said there was immense scope for clinical trials in the country, while delivering the keynote address at the ‘Pharma summit-2007 –Indian pharma coming of age’ organised by the Indian School of Business here on Wednesday.

Mr. Venkateswarlu said the industry was growing phenomenally and access was not as much of a concern as affordability. At the time of independence, 95 per cent of the country’s pharma needs were imported. The industry had moved from a Rs.10-crore turnover to Rs.35,000 crore and a three-fold growth was forecast by 2020.

He urged the industry to foster public-private partnerships and suggested that companies should adopt villages.

“As this sector continues to grow, the main concern is about ethics at every stage. We need to increase our benchmark for ethics to meet global standards and review it at regular intervals,” he said.

Stressing the need for encouraging medium and large-scale production, he said there was huge potential for marketing traditional Indian medicine.

Anil Mathai, CEO (pharmaceuticals division), Novartis India Ltd, presented an overview of the pharma industry.

He said the market share of multinational corporations had declined remarkably from 75 per cent to 20 per cent between 1971 and 2002.

It was expected to increase to 30 per cent in the next five to ten years because of product patent regime.

Priyanka Aggarwal, member, Asia Healthcare Practices, McKinsey & Company, said the Indian pharma industry was expected to triple by 2015 with a compounded annual growth rate of 12.3 per cent and become the tenth largest player (now 14th) in the world.

Stating that 45 per cent of the growth would come from the market in tier-II cities, she said creation of new markets was important in view of the potential in such cities.

Viraj Gandhi, CEO, Medicine Shoppe, and M.R. Rao, Dean, Indian School of Business were among those who spoke.

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