The famous English author, HG Wells, had once said, “There is no upper limit to what individuals are capable of doing with their minds. There is no age limit that bars them from beginning. There is no obstacle that cannot be overcome if they persist and believe.” Prasad, perhaps is the genuine disciple of this philosophy.
Challenging the odds
The company started its pharma activities as an Active Pharmaceutical Intermediate (API) manufacturer. Paracetamol was the first product of the company. However, Prasad wanted to do something different. He didn’t want to get featured among the people from ‘me too’ league. Though devoid of any pharma experience, Prasad had a lot of logical thinking. There were initial failures too. “That was the period of intense hardships. It was a start up company. We needed to buy new equipment many times and re-do the plant. That was the struggle we somehow managed get through,” informs Prasad. He adds, “We didn’t have a big facility or a big team.” Prasad learnt by the time-tested trial and error method and kept the product going.
Understanding the market
Since its inception the company has always believed in negotiating paths that were never tried before. During the initial years, though small, the company never shied away from revealing its global ambitions.
C Krishna Prasad MD, Granules India |
“During the eighties, companies of our size would never think of exporting to markets like the US and Europe, however, we decided to try these markets. We made some contacts and travelled for marketing purposes. By 1987, we started dealing with the US market,” informs Prasad. The company’s marketing approach was customer driven. Prasad was leading from the front in a campaign for company’s products in the global market. He used to go to sale and look at the customer’s need. “A customer may not always know what he wants but I would think about the things that would make his life comfortable,” says Prasad. Customer demands and requirements made Prasad expand the company’s product portfolio. Prasad is also credited for coining the term Pharmaceutical Formulation Intermediate (PFI).
Operational excellence (OE)
OE is an innovative concept at Granules India to make maximum utilisation of available resources. There is a separate team to look after OE. This team looks at products and figures out how to efficiently manufacture it so that company can improve productivity and reduce waste. Prasad says, “This team is engrossed with how to save cents per kilo, which, given the volume of products, can make the difference between leaders and laggards.”
OE features
Dr Bhaskar Krishna Arumugam CEO, Granules India |
Dr Bhaskar Krishna Arumugam, CEO, Granules India, says, “At Granules, we recognise that it is important to not only invest in cutting edge assets; it is important to unleash the full value of these assets to provide superior customer value. In view of this, Granules embarked on a OE programme with a singular objective in 2008: to emerge as a preferred choice of customers through superior quality, service and cost.”
Granules recognised that much of its OE objective would be achieved through a culture of shop-floor excellence. As a result, the company’s OE programmes focus on process improvements, raw material coefficients, chemistries and other areas that deliver sustainable wins. OE teams inspect each process step to determine how to increase yields throughput and achieve process standardisation while reducing wastage and enhancing quality. The OE culture enhanced operational capacity without a corresponding increase in capital expenditure which lets Granules offer more value to customers.
Granules created Area Effectiveness Teams (AET), which were integrated with the operations team to disseminate knowledge through the following initiatives like, enrich the team with cross-functional competencies, discuss the performance parameters of the previous day, plan the day’s production schedule with achievement gap, use sophisticated tools including root cause analysis, arrange for one attendee to speak on a business topic for 15 minutes.
The result is that at Granules there is a better understanding of sophisticated monitoring and analysis tools, as well as when, where and how they should be applied and the various parameters of plant and performance monitoring. The OE team comprises specialists in Six Sigma and engineers (chemical, mechanical and electrical) who work collectively to remove operational bottlenecks. There are 15 members in our OE team spread over our India-based facilities.
“While Granules made notable strides with the OE programme, we believe there is still tremendous scope for improvement. Our OE culture has made our team more inquisitive; we constantly find ways to improve our systems and processes to remain as one of the most efficient pharma manufacturers. Given the nature of our products, marginal sustainable improvements can make the difference between leaders and laggards in our industry,”says Arumugam.
R&D
Granules has made hard work a norm and success a habit. Though termed as leader in the market for paracetamol, ibuprofen and metformin their quest for ‘new’ has only grown over the years. “We are investing in R&D to develop best process technologies that will give us global advantage,” informs, Arumugam. Traditionally R&D is not considered as a play ground for Indian pharma companies. Time, money and risk involved in the development of New Chemical Entities (NCE) have for a long duration kept pharma industry hostile towards this very important section of their own business. However, contrary to this trend Granules has shown an interest in R&D. Arumugam says, “Our investment in R&D is increasing steadily. Usually, considering the risk for the investor, mainly big pharma companies have occupied this space for a long time.”
Granules also has global collaborations. “We are leveraging expertise that are available throughout the world. We are working with some of the top universities and talents across the globe,” states Arumugam.
Granules provides not just affordable but also the best product to its customers. “The reason why we could keep our cost low is because we are very focussed. We are not working on 100 products simultaneously. We will continue to increase our investment in R&D. We want to accelerate growth and for that we are adding on products,” assures Arumugam.
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Growth trajectory
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Alliances
| Gagillapur facility |
Collaborations have remained a key feature of Granules’ journey for so many years. The company has entered into marketing alliance for its Metformin Abbreviated New Drug Applications (ANDA) for US sales. To leverage its PFI and Finished Dosage (FD) capabilities JV was formed with a leading primary ibuprofen supplier, Hubei Biocause. Granules even entered into knowledge widening collaborations with IIT Chennai, NUS Singapore and a US laboratory to reinforce its goal of having applications that are the ‘best to file’ as opposed to ‘first to file’.
Moreover, one of the most interesting things that Granules has done is a Joint Venture (JV) with Ajinomoto Omnichem. Arumugam informs, “This JV has been set up in the Pharma City in Vishakhapatnam. Construction has already begun and the facility should be completed in about a year. This JV has brought us to CRAMS space, in a derisked fashion. It is difficult and time consuming to build the market and team on your own. This JV has helped us get instant market credibility. Ajinomoto Omnichem has a very good relationship with some of the big pharma companies. They have great technology. We are bringing in manufacturing and local expertise. This JV gives us an access to the molecules that could not have been easily available.”
Granules took five years to grow from Rs 256 crore to Rs 654 crore. The company now expects to grow to over Rs 1,000 crore within two years. In the future, Granules expects to reinforce its knowledge-led competitive advantage by manufacturing some of its critical raw materials, manufacture more high margin products and invest in green technologies. This will surely enable Granules to emerge as a stronger and more sustainable knowledge driven company over the foreseeable future.