sapta-sindhu

Indian pills for the world's ills!

"Where the mind matters, India matters." Now thats not rhetoric I am indulging in. This is a line from a recent article on the Indian pharmaceutical industry that appeared in Asia times. Infact I would highly encourage you to take a moment to read it.

My last post was on Amul and how it is poised to emerge as the market leader in the ice-cream market in India overtaking the transnational giant HLL. It was argued that liberalisation was going to sound the death knell for Indian industry on the whole. Infact quite the opposite is happening, liberalisation is turning out to be a boon as opposed to a bane. The IT services industry was the first to turn the world's eyes on India. Now it is the pharmaceutical industry. Not only are they focussing on manufacturing cheaper pills aided by the low cost of labour and an abundant pool of talented scientists, they are also spending significant amounts on research and development. The fact that R&D is given priority indicates that they are focussed on the long term and are not merely in for a quick buck.

Here are a few interesting excerpts from the article.

"Dr Reddy's Laboratories Limited (NYSE-Listed RDY) last year became the first Asia-Pacific pharmaceutical company to list on NYSE".

"The Indian drug company earlier (Cipla ) that year had stunned the world by offering to supply three ingredients of the AIDS cocktail at US$600 per patient per year to African governments and at $350 to Medicins Sans Frontiers, a non governmental organization. Pit this against the $10,000 to $12,000 per patient per year doses sold by the international drug majors such as Merck, Bristol Myers and Boehringer-Ingelheim GMBH."

"Lupin Laboratories, a Mumbai firm, claimed to have the only factory in Asia that is certified sterile (for injectable drugs) by America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A year later, more than 25 of the country's drug plants are US FDA-inspected and approved. The country's chemists are innovative and haven't lost their edge in imitating either."

It is becoming obvious that free market economy and democracy are doing India a world of good. The latter is what our northern neighbour lacks and maybe thats why India and not China is the next super power in the making !

Posted by sai at September 1, 2002 10:40 PM