Need to ramp up India’s triple advantage of cost, quality and scale in pharma to next level, says DoP Secretary

India has the triple advantage of cost, quality and scale in the pharma sector, and this needs to be ramped up, S Aparna, Secretary, Department of Pharma, said today. Speaking at the 7th international conference on ‘India Pharma and India Medical Device 2022,’ she also said that India has built up reputation for being able to deliver good-quality generic medicine, at high production scale and at affordable prices.

She further said, “It is a matter of pride that we are able to fulfil 50 per cent of the demand in many of the low-income economies as well as in advance market by supplying on a regular basis good-quality generic medicines. This triple advantage in quality, cost and scale needs now to be ramped up to the next level. It would be important to put our heads together and try to look at the world as it will be 25 years hence.”

She also stated that the pace of change is growing faster in the health sector; hence, the skills that are required will be agility, ability to overcome redundancy and creativity at every level. “There are three strands which we should focus on — regulatory framework, research framework along with the resources, including fiscal and talent,” she added.

She also mentioned that in order to achieve the desired goals, we need to work on collaboration between large companies and start-ups, industry and academia, by making public research more accessible.

Adding to it, Rajesh Bhushan, Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, said, “The paradigm of health has shifted from health to wellness and to well-being. Health is not limited to what happens in a hospital or between a patient and pharmacy; health is much more than that.”

Bhushan also said that under the Ayushman Bharat programme, the government is planning to operationalise around 1.5 lakh health and wellness centres in the country by 2022. He further stated that the government is planning to spend Rs 65,000 crores in the next five years till 2025-26 to create health infrastructure at district levels.

Bhushan also added that during the pandemic, the government worked on the mission mode to repurpose the existing hospitals, doctors and beds at district level. “I urge the industry to collaborate with the government to identify the existing skills set which can be repurposed to suit the emerging needs,” he added.

Anurag Jain, Secretary, DPIIT, put emphasis on ‘discover in India,’ ‘innovate in India’ and then ‘Make in India,’ especially for the pharma sector. “The budget also focussed on the pharma sector as the sun rise industry along with the supportive policy and encouraging R&D by the government. The most important role for policymakers is to assure collaborative network between the government, industry and academia. We saw this approach during the management of COVID, and India has successfully ward off the pandemic,” he added.

Jain also highlighted the importance of IPR in the sector and stated that this is the first time that the number of patents filed by Indians exceeded the number of patents filed by non-Indians in India.

Pankaj Patel, Past President, FICCI and Chairman, Zydus Cadila Healthcare said that our goal is to achieve $130 billion by 2030, and in order to achieve that, we need 12-13 per cent growth rate. Industries today are not growing at that rate; a significant jump in growth rate would be required and the only way is to move from volume to value game, which means we need to innovate, he added.

Sanjay Murdeshwar, MD, Novartis India,, said that the vision for 2047 in the pharma sector is based on fundamental belief that when India innovates, the world can certainly benefit. That is the core of what we need to really focus on, he added.