The rupee is in a vicious circle of low investment, high risk, negative sentiment, investor sentiment dipping and exiting all this putting more pressure for withdrawal of investment from India. This vicious circle needs to be broken. Some tough measures to address these negative aspects need to be taken and boldly implemented although these may be of a high risk nature, politically. This will send a strong message of a ‘no nonsense approach’ on the part of Indian establishments to global and domestic investors, who will then start to re-evaluate coming back and slowly the circle will get broken. The near future seems to be very choppy, with currency fluctuation and inflation remaining the bad boys. Indian healthcare industry should look to go for more effective import substitution and use of local resources in providing services. Government should look to effectively promoting alternative ancient Indian medical therapies to enable people to have options for a low cost but reasonable effective treatments for ailments. Most Indian pharma companies need to spend quite an amount on overseas markets for marketing costs, R&D costs, trial costs, US FDA payments and approvals etc., all of which being in $, the effective costs in India go up. This results in an increased cost loading on the Indian production leading to substantial squeeze in profitability.
– KH Viswanathan, Executive Director, RSM Astute Consulting Group