Organised by Inventicon, experts at the two-day event urge constant innovations and upgradation of technology to fight counterfeiting
The anti-counterfeiting and Brand Protection Summit 2018, organised by Inventicon gave a platform to the industries to discuss the issues and trends in anti-counterfeiting. The event was held on January 16-17, 2018 in Mumbai. Various issues from different industries like pharma, auto, FMCG, steel, digital etc were discussed at the event.
Eminent speakers like Bejon Kumar Misra, International Consumer Policy Expert & Founder, Patient Safety and Access Initiative of India Foundation; Dr RK Sanghavi, Senior Consulting Clinician Advisor – Positive Health and Chairman, Nutraceutical Committee, IDMA and Pradeep Dhargalkar, Head of Packaging Development, Unichem Laboratories represented the pharma sector at the event and informed the audience on the developments in the sector and the challenges in tacklingcounterfeiting in the pharma industry.
Misra spoke on Consumer Awareness: How to help consumers from falling prey to counterfeits and their products. He briefed the audience on importance of educating the consumers about the benefits of original products and hazards to counterfeited ones.
Dr Sanghavi spoke on the challenges and measures to deal with counterfeiting in the pharma industry. He gave a brief understanding to the audience on the menace of counterfeiting in the pharma industry and explained that the problem of counterfeit is across the global and this sector requires very strong anti counterfeiting measures.
Whereas, Dhargalkar highlighted the major challenges faced by the packaging industry in addressing the counterfeit. He says, “Packaging industries has be one step ahead of counterfeiters and technology which is available for free empowers them to copy or replicate the technology used for anti counterfeit.
Only mantra for staying ahead of these counterfeiters is constant innovations and up gradation of technology being used in packaging.”
Counterfeiting is a global problem and is growing at an alarming rate. Moreover, India is a large market for such activities. India’s booming e-commerce environment has added further complexities. Counterfeiting not only affects the sales and revenue of the industry but also dents the reputation of brands and results in heavy revenue losses due to unaccounted sales and a huge challenge to the ‘Make in India’ programme. The Indian counterfeit market is growing at the rate of four per cent per annum as per reports. In India, approximately three billion pieces of counterfeit and pirated products were seized in 2013. Of these, 2.3 billion pieces were illicit pharma products, 470 million pieces were electronic appliances and 50 million pieces were foodstuff. There is annual loss of $2 billion because of counterfeited auto components alone.
The event also had a key note address on the Role of customs to prevent counterfeited goods to make way across boarders by Sunil Kumar, Deputy Comissioner, IRS(Customs and CGST); Overview of the counterfeiting and brand protection issues in India by Capt Shakil Ahmed, Head-Brand Protection, Diageo India.