The right mix for success

Pawan Chaudhary

When you start a business from scratch, it takes years of hard work, dedication and ups and downs to make it flourish. In a business of generics and me-too drugs, survival is the utmost challenge for any company. Thus, adopting new techniques, approaches and strategies to stay in the competition and overcome it is the only way to success.

Growth and success in the pharma industry depends on a perfect multi-pronged strategic and systematic blend of research products, generics drugs, innovative marketing techniques and talented professionals. Inventing a new molecule can be an easy task, but developing that molecule into a novel drug which caters to unmet medical needs and then positioning it correctly in the market is the key to success. With this approach, Venus Remedies was brought to life. Founded in the year 1989, Venus started its journey with the vision of establishing a business that preserves and improves human life through innovation. For the first few years, intravenous fluids and generics contributed to the product range. These products were high-demand, low sales volumes due to cut-throat competition, but helped Venus stand on its feet in the hospital care market because all were injections or infusions.

By the late 90s, when the Indian pharma industry was emerging as a global player in generics drugs and later succeeded in luring many pharma companies, small and medium sized companies like Venus faced intense competition for survival. It started facing price erosion and hurdles to sustain and retain its growth. To curb this, we conducted market and industrial surveys and analysis, in line with our vision of preserving and improving human life through innovation, to understand the unmet segments and the needs of the society. This is when we realised that we should focus on R&D. Venus touched new heights with its changed approach and focal point. Gradually, we shifted our focus from generics to a research-driven company which is involved in path-breaking innovations (patent-protected drugs).

By 2005, when the pharma industry was witnessing sweeping changes in the patent regime governing drugs, Venus developed considerable expertise in critical care and super-speciality segments, including anti-infective (antimicrobial resistance), anti-cancer, neurology, pain management and skin and wound care. Until then, India had been benefiting from the research and developments in other countries and securing one’s knowledge/research product from copying was the biggest challenge. Later, when the patent regimen shifted to product patent, the share of the Indian pharma industry in the total pie of approvals for generics rose steadily. This was our time to harvest the benefits of our focused approach and constant efforts. The generics players did exploit the spawned opportunity to its fullest, but then soon came the emergence of R&D in the pharma industry with many companies adopting this approach to deal with the increasing competition. Venus, being an early entrant in the R&D segment, benefited and secured patents more than any other Indian pharma company till now. Nothing can be achieved without a dynamic team of intellectuals and that is the biggest strength of any company, especially in an industry like pharma. Venus can boast of a highly dedicated, skilled and self-groomed force of mixed specialities, responsible for taking the company to greater heights.

Venus is regularly involved in conducting market surveys to understand the unmet needs in the market and the demand gaps. The company could foresee the potential of antibiotics fading away and thus focused its approach on the unmet segments in the pharma industry to carve a niche for itself. It is the result of its focused approach that Venus today owns some of the most effective, patent-protected superbug-tackling drugs in its product kitty. With a market size of `915 crores, the anti-infective segment is one of the largest and most unmet segments in the pharma industry of India. The ever increasing resistance against the present blockbuster drugs is contributing strongly and making it grow at a rate of 15.4 per cent. Venus is one of the few R&D-led companies which is working in this segment and has established a name for itself.

Soon after, we started signing strategic tie-ups for marketing and distribution of our research products pan-India and started exporting to the emerging markets. Today, we have our presence in 60 countries and are known worldwide as a research-focused pharma company which concentrates on technologically complex products and has developed a niche in the injectable segment of the pharma industry worldwide.

With intensifying competition, slow regulatory clearances, poor research funding and lack of copyright protection, even the research and development in the pharma industry in India has slowed down considerably. An increase in the average cost of developing a new drug, longer R&D cycle with very limited outcome, weak patent laws, lack of transparency in the regulatory system, new policies on clinical trials by the Government of India and slow returns on investments are the key factors that are keeping big pharma giants off R&D, especially in the short life cycle product range like antibiotics. However, there is a huge scope for R&D-driven companies and generics players to replace most of the innovator drugs that are going off patent by 2015 and establish their brand names in India and across the world. As Venus has secured more than 90 patents for its 15 research products from across the globe, the company is hopeful of making the most of this opportunity. To stay abreast of the competition and establish the brand globally, Venus has been investing more than 15 per cent of its total revenue in research and development on a yearly basis. This helps the company in funding its intellectual property wealth initiatives as well as drug development research regularly. Recently, Venus had entered the over-the-counter (OTC) segment with its first herbal stress reliever candy, ‘Ezenus’.

Today, India is among the Top 5 emerging pharma markets across the globe and a frontrunner in a wide array of specialities such as manufacturing of complex drugs and research and development of new drug molecules and technologies. But to sustain oneself in this dynamic market and retain the growth of a company, it is imperative for pharma companies today to look at new avenues, niche segments and global tie-ups for research and marketing. Contract manufacturing, contract research, bio-pharma products, new drug research and so on are the other potential areas for thriving in the pharma industry.

The Indian pharma industry is a knowledge-based industry which is growing steadily and is expected to record a growth of 10-12 per cent in 2013-14. As a result, the pharma industry of India is expected to touch $35.9 billion by 2016 and $56 billion by 2020.

As per a report of IMS Health, the domestic pharma market has registered a growth of 6.8 per cent with total sales of $1.03 billion in May 2013. Exports form a major chunk of the total pharma market in India, up from $13.2 billion in 2011-12 to $14.6 billion in 2012-13.

As per a report by India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), the generics exports from India are growing tremendously at nearly 30 per cent annually. The growth of generics, coupled by the R&D initiatives of Indian pharma companies, is the first step that the Indian pharma industry should take to establish itself as a leading global player.

Export being a huge growth factor for the Indian pharma industry, many government and private firms are trying everything possible to boost the export capability of Indian pharma companies. For instance, Exim Bank has decided to expand the scope of its finances for extended repayments to all the pharma firms.

For companies like Venus, where a large portion of the total revenue comes from exports, exclusive and non-exclusive marketing deals for their research products and generic drugs with well-established pharma giants across the world play a very important role. Furthermore, the depreciation of rupee has also increased the rich inflow of the currency against which the rupee is devalued. Besides this, export is the best way possible to drive growth under the new Drug Pricing Policy Order, which has brought 348 medicines in the National List of Essential Medicines. Export is the only hope for big pharma companies to gain momentum for the overall growth of the industry.

Apart from export, India is also known as the most preferred destination for diagnostic outsourcing and clinical trials. A majority of the international pharma companies look up to India for outsourcing a wide range of drug development activities, like conducting clinical trials of new drug molecules, diagnostic research, analytic and biochemical studies and so on.

India has not only emerged as the most desired destination for a rich talent pool of professionals, it also offers highly cost-effective research services complemented by high-quality data generated with the help of enabled IT infrastructure.

These factors provide a conducive environment to all the R&D-led domestic pharma players to make the most of it and contribute significantly to the global pharma industry by coming up with efficacious and cost-effective drugs. With a DSIR-approved and GLP-certified research centre, the Venus Medicine Research Centre is working in collaboration with many national and international firms and medical institutions to invent breakthrough remedies and serve mankind with affordable drugs.

In a nutshell, R&D, coupled by the right mix of marketing techniques and talent pool, is the key to marking your presence and establishing yourself in this dynamic and fast-growing industry. So, to establish yourself in the pharma industry, it is important in today’s time to come up with innovative solutions which are within the reach of a common man.