"India Pharma Inc" gearing up for the next level of growth

Indian pharmaceutical companies will have to rethink business strategy in the light of several interventions in the past one year, according to a new study from the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and PricewaterhouseCooper India.

Globally, the scientific foundation on which the pharma industry rests has improved vastly over the years, the study noted. Technologies for collecting and synthesising biological data are improving and becoming much cheaper and more efficient. However, in the short term, the industry continues to face challenges like patent cliff, rising drug discovery cost, harsher regulations and price controls, coupled with spiralling health care cost.

The worldwide sales of medicines reached $1.08 trillion in 2011 (an increase of 7.8% over the previous year) and are expected to reach 1.5 trillion USD by 20201. The emerging markets represent the fastest-growing segment of the global pharma industry. Sales in the four BRIC countries (Brazil, China, India and Russia) were up by 22.6%2 over the previous year, indicating that real surge in growth will come from the emerging markets. Most of the projected increase in revenues will come from branded generics rather than innovator products.