Expo likely to be attended by over 30,000 delegates from across the globe
CPhI India, P-MEC India along with ICSE, the three-day pharmaceutical industry event, kickstarted in Mumbai today. The first day of the event witnessed over 1000 plus exhibitors from over 100 countries. The expo is likely to be attended by over 30,000 delegates from across the globe.
During his inaugural speech Sudhanshu Pandey, Joint Secretary, Dept. of Commerce, Government of India wished the event organisers all success and said, “Platforms like these recognise people and motivate them to do better while continuing to inspire others. The last few years have been tough on the pharma sector due to various issues and challenges with regards to regulatory norms. But we must address these challenges in the right spirit. It’s a long way for the Indian pharma industry, but we are on the right track. India today boasts of world class facilities. The road may be tough but we have what it takes to get there.”
Pandey also shared some of the (Indian) government’s plans to boost the industry. He mentioned that the government is trying to make regulations more stringent and is also working on minimising/simplifying the process. The government is trying to understand the industry issues and is willing to work on it. He pointed out that there has been a dip in India’s pharma exports and indicated that the government and the DGFT are finalising different policies to reverse this slide. He assured industry attendees that the government has allocated sufficient funds for resource deployment and creation of infrastructure in the current year and concluded that if these are utilised, more would be allocated by the Government.
Joji George, Managing Director, UBM India said, “Against the backdrop of India constantly seeking to match and surpass western quality standards while maintaining lower manufacturing costs, at UBM, our objective for CPhI 2014 is to help elevate India as the global pharma destination by showcasing the unique positioning of the Indian pharma market and provide an optimum investment platform amidst its global counterparts.”
The event also saw the launch of a report titled, Pharma Insights: India 2015. One of the most startling trends to emerge from the report is that small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that have traditionally relied on the domestic market are now rapidly expanding and emerging as MNCs based on exports led growth strategies For example, Galpha Laboratories, 66 per cent of sales this year were domestic, has seen exports expand by 400 per cent in the last year. Moreover, some of India’s biggest companies are also investing heavily in R&D programmes to safeguard against slower growth as a result of the patent cliff, this has increasingly been across new drug delivery systems, formulation and manufacturing technology, along with biosimilars.
Report highlights
- CPhI India report forecasts new MNCs to emerge from India’s pharma SMEs and Japan and Africa as key export growth markets
- Indian manufacturers evolving up value chain, concentrating on high-value, low volume work and shifting some R&D programmes to Western economies. NCE launch predicted in next few years
- India’s biggest companies will see growth in CRAMS services for patented products as trust in regulatory and quality standards increases
- India to increasingly become a hotbed of clinical trial supply and advanced development work
- Biggest players to grow technology base through overseas acquisitions and partnering with big pharma for R&D
- Expenditures on R&D by 30 of the top pharma companies in India rose by 19.7 per cent, with investments focused on novel drug delivery systems
- Some of India’s biggest players are actively investing in R&D facilities abroad — Sun, Piramal, Lupin and Cipla
- New chemical entities from India to emerge in the next few years. Cutting edge research is underway, including innovations in creating an oral dosage form of insulin
- Huge future growth potential in Japan where Indian companies currently have limited presence, but there is predicted to be a rapidly rising use of generics
- In 2015 a significant number Indian companies will enter the African market as growth is predicted at 25 per cent to 30 per cent by volume per year
- Biologics and biosimilars to represent 15 per cent of Indian market value by 2020
- India’s API producers have increasingly started to shift towards high value low volume work with complex chemistry and IP challenges.
Sudarshan Jain, Managing Director, Abbott Healthcare Solutions commented, “The Indian pharma sector is clearly growing, making significant contributions to the Indian economy and putting us on the global map. This sector is redefining itself by moving to ‘next practices’ from ‘best practices’. We see strong thrust in the manufacturing arena in line with our national priority of ‘Make in India’. Some of the entries for the award clearly reflect good work done by Indian pharma industry and augurs well for industry.”
Devinder Pal, President, Catalyst Pharma Consult said, “One of the key challenges faced by the industry is to reclaim the enviable reputation it had earned, which has unfortunately got tarnished rather badly. Happily, the FDA administered jolts have done the trick, it has awakened the industry to the need of building quality culture and shunning complacency and juggad.”
Dr Ajit Dangi, President and Chief Executive Officer, Danssen Consulting highlighted, ‘In CPhI / P- MEC , the key elements have always been innovation and excellence. Organisations are increasingly focusing on 3 Ps – People, Planet and Profit and have started recruiting chief sustainability officers to give them competitive edge. The CPhI / P-MEC event will provide good insight in to initiatives in this area.”
Technical sessions were organised on advances in fluid bed processing and tablet coating technologies, quality by design, the UK generics market, Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient and finished pharma product preparation, e Lab notebook and e MES- Future of pharma industry, innovation drives green growth: advanced flow reactor technology industrial production made real, improving quality and saving cost by lean materials handling and defining the future of digital advertising.
Another area that will transform over the coming years is biotechnology and biosimilars. The CPhI Pharma Insights: India report envisages further investment and expansion across this sector, predicting that by 2020, this part of the market will have risen up to around 15 per cent of total sales.
EP News Bureau – Mumbai