Indian pharmaceutical industry: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

India has evolved from having shortage of drugs and medicine for its public, to being a hub of generics in the global arena; we look to study the Indian growth story in pharmaceutical sector. Post-Independence to till the present, the evolution can be broken down into 5 phases, each having its own distinct set of regulation benefitting a certain segment of stakeholders. From a time when the foreign players dominated the market, the phase shifted to India investing to set up its own national sector in the space, the GOI changing laws to propagate the growth of the Indian firms which saw the foreign players diminish their stake in the country. The finally, the GOI passing the laws changing the patent duration back to 14 years in 2005, which has seen again huge investments done by foreign players in the country. Then we moved in to see the underlying problems which are prohibiting the growth story of the industry and how it can be tackled. Some major problems have been that of Pricing of drugs which have made it unaffordable by a major chunk of the population, the proliferation of counterfeit drugs manufacturers in the nation which is also a form of crime in the rise; a lot of Indian firms off late are in the scanner for producing substandard drugs. The Inadequate talent pool to see the growth happening in the next phase and the low spending by the government in the sector. India is a growing nation in terms of disposable wealth and lifestyle. Also, it is a hub of some of the major disease such as diabetes, cardiac problems, and cancer, which require a longer time of treatment. It has been seen as a location of opportunity for a lot of transnational companies. Seeing the above problems and opportunities we have given our recommendations on the study which requires a presence of a government body like the NPPA to keep a constant check in the prices of the drugs for ethical reasons, and also the involvement of all the stakeholders to counter the menace of counterfeit drugs which are not only tarnishing the image of a growing industry but also are responsible for taking lives in the process and finally the need for the Indian pharmaceutical companies to shift their innovation orientation from process development to product development due to the change in regulation post 2005.