Role of Indian Pharmaceutical Companies

Medicines have become an integral part of our lives. Be it in the form of tablets, capsules, syrups or more, they quintessentially enhance wellbeing in a non-intrusive manner.

The Indian Pharmaceutical Industry, particularly, has been the front runner in a wide range of specialties involving complex drugs’ manufacture, development and technology. With the advantage of being a highly organised sector, the pharmaceutical companies in India are growing at the rate of $ 4.5 billion, registering further growth of 8 - 9 % annually. We have the rare distinction of producing simple headache pills to sophisticated antibiotics and complex cardiac compounds in-house.

More than 20,000 registered units are fragmented across the country and reports say that 250 leading Indian pharmaceutical companies control 70% of the market share with stark price competition and government price regulations.

And the Indian advantage in the pharmaceutical industry can be summarized as:
• Skilled and efficient workforce:
High managerial and technical expertise, adequately qualified and English-educated professionals make it a work force to reckon with
• Cost-effective chemical synthesis:
Due to its improved and excellent cost-beneficial chemical synthesis for various drug molecules, Indian pharmaceutical companies are able to provide wide variety of bulk drugs and export sophisticated bulk drugs
• Hassle-free legal and financial framework:
With a strong legal and financial support, this industry has flourished progressively over the years
• Information and technology:
It has a good network of world-class educational institutions and established strengths in Information Technology enabling further growth of the pharmaceutical industry
• Globalisation:
A free and open market economy provides for a continuously growing industry
• Consolidation:
The international pharmaceutical industry is finding great opportunities in India due to the introduction of the process of consolidation, which has become a generalised phenomenon in the world pharmaceutical industry

Although the Indian pharmaceutical industry is on the forward run, there are some steps that need to be taken and continued for a sustained future growth.

• Indian pharmaceutical companies need to attain the right product-mix and look at strengthening their core competencies even further at a faster pace
• To continue further consolidation, they have to look at mergers and acquisitions with the world and national market players
• Research and development needs to be undertaken on a massive scale to stay competitive
• The recent advances in biotechnology and information technology need to be captured in the Indian pharmaceutical scenario to make huge leaps in the industry

The future of the Indian pharmaceutical industry will be determined by how well it markets its products to several regions and distributes risks, its forward and backward integration capabilities, its R&D, its consolidation through mergers and acquisitions, co-marketing and licensing agreements.

So, we can now safely that the Indian pharmaceutical industry, with its rich scientific talents and research capabilities, supported by Intellectual Property Protection regime is well set to take on the international market.