Chair’s Address

Marking his presence felt at PPL Conclave 2022, Chakravarthi AVPS, Global Ambassador, World Packaging Organisation, said that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the pharma and biopharma companies to the centre stage. “It has brought home the fact that this critical industry functions as an important social security net and undergirds a healthy society. India, in the field of pharma, has made its presence significantly by the turn of the century in the global market after becoming self-reliant in the previous century itself. India’s noble act of delivering ARVs at almost, even less than one-fourth of the global cost than the prevailing price, has alleviated the misery of millions of people across the globe, especially in Africa and some parts of Latin American countries. India, with its exports, on account of excellent pharma chemistry skills, has now become an important global player by supplying affordable medicines to over 215 countries,” he notified.

He further said, “Our pharma industry has presence in all therapeutic segments with almost all types of dosage forms, and is a rich source of generic medicines. Further, drug formulations and biologicals are the fourth largest principal commodity being exported by India. One-third of each pill consumed in the US is made in India and around 40 per cent generic medicines and most of those are going from Hyderabad. The critical role of packaging cannot be undermined, whether it is uninterrupted supply of essential drugs, expediting PPE or testing kits, supplying the vaccines to several nations simultaneously meeting huge domestic demand as well. The pharma packaging is always designed to meet the safe use of medicines by patients.”

According to Chakravarthi, packaging is a vibrant industry in India, contributing increasingly to the growing economy of India. “The packaging industry worldwide itself is $1 trillion, we are an almost $60 billion industry in India. Product and disease information with proper instructions and the product efficacy and integrity throughout the supply chain gamut is one of the important aspects,” he mentioned.