In a survey conducted by US-based business magazine, Forbes, Indian pharmaceutical firm Sun Pharma bagged the 38 rank. There were a total of five Indian companies who made the list. They are Larsen & Toubro (09), Hindustan Unilever (12), Infosys (19), Tata Consultancy (29). Other US-based pharma companies, which were ranked in Forbes list were, Alexion Pharmaceuticals (2), Edwards Lifesciences (8), Perrigo Pharmaceuticals (17).
On receiving the recognition from Forbes, a spokesperson of Sun Pharma said, “Our focus has been for a complete basket of products including the latest treatments, which we have done consistently over the last 25 years, creating value for the long term. Even though we are a branded generic/ generic company, through our investments in R&D, we have deployed technology to create patient- friendly solutions, as in month-long depot injections or safer anti-cancer drugs.”
Forbes requires at least seven years of financial data for a given firm in order to be considered on its list of most innovative companies. It also use a ‘research and development’ screen requiring that companies make some investment in R&D. Also, to control for size differences, it includes only those with a market value greater than $10 billion. In very rare cases when a company derived more than 80 per cent of their revenues from a single high economic growth market (e.g., India, China). Forbes assumed a small portion of the company’s innovation premium was derived from higher domestic market growth rather than entering new products, services, or markets.
EP New Bureau (With inputs from Usha Sharma)