Save the 'a', Ahmedabad-based Troikaa Pharmaceuticals has lived up to its name. It's scored thrice. That is, by developing an injectible (Dynapar AQ) of lower dosage volume with much lesser pain for relief in post-operative pain, trauma pains, fractures, renal and biliary colic and other acute painful conditions.
Second, the company is now on the verge of launching the product in Latin America , EU, CIS and African countries. And finally, with this launch, it expects to garner more than 10% of the market share, the highest among 12 serious players, from the current 0.8%. Ketan Patel, the CMD of the Rs 105-crore Troikaa, says successful clinical trials on the injectible has helped him bring down the dosage to 1 ml from the existing 3 ml, at Rs 14 for a dosage. "Our aim is to increase the product technology so that we can cover market share in the longer run."
While India abysmally lags the rest of the world in any measure of health, some Indian companies have succeeded in innovating and making healthcare more affordable to people who are most deprived of it. These innovations have led them to grow faster while giving people longer, healthier lives.
The Bangalore-based Sami Labs is a case in point. It decided to focus on Ayurveda and made medicines derived from natural herbs. "Ayurveda is a treasure and we have been efficient in our production. For example, the drug we have recently developed for the treatment of Sporasis, a skin infection, will sell for Rs 150 per month for the standard dosage. Other companies are selling chemical-based medicines for Rs 1,500 a month for the same thing," says Dr Muhammad Majid, the CMD of the company.
Another plaudit by Sami includes a water-soluble form of Offorskohlin from the plant Coleus Forskohlin. "This is the only plant-sourced form of the compound and the challenge was to make it soluble, which even a giant like Hoechst could not do. We did that in 2005, increasing the solubility 6,000 times and have got approval from the Indian drug regulator for marketing the drug," says Majid. His company got a patent for the process of making it water-soluble, along with IIT-Bombay which was a partner in the research.
Apart from a host of innovations along the line, Majid's company has grown by around 25% on average, and he expects a revenue of around Rs 200 crore by March. "We are strengthening our marketing team to target the US , Europe , and Japan ," he says.
The Indian pharmaceutical industry is worth $4.5 billion and growing at the rate of over 8 -9% per year.
Supreme Pharmaceuticals has targeted rural Uttar Pradesh and selling its drugs at much cheaper prices. “Our products are sold 25-30% lesser than our competition," says CEO K Mahendra. “We have also ensured the cheapest possible raw material from a place called Valsad in Maharashtra that keeps the cost down," he says.
The company does not publish pamphlets or distribute medicines to all doctors. "We focus on getting the medicine to the patient. We give out a limited number of medicines to doctors, and ask him to recommend the same to patients. We make sure he does that," he says. "We don't give away free samples to doctors and are able to save 20% from this targeted marketing, making our medicines much more affordable for the rural population. They are our target market."
Mahendra affirms that low-cost does not translate into low quality. "Our medicines are for cough and cold, and common infections, and are of good quality. There can be no compromise on that."
On the western outskirts of Bangalore lies the state-of-the-art development facility of ReaMetrix, which has devised a immune monitoring test for HIV-positive patients cutting the cost of testing by one-fifth, and reaching out to the lower sections of the society who typically have the highest infection rate. This test, at Rs 125, is now available to lower income groups who have higher incidence of the disease and earlier paid Rs 600-750 for it.
The objective at ReaMetrix is to use local resources and create an innovation that could make healthcare affordable for the lower-income groups. "We are already supplying to countries in Africa , which has the highest incidence of AIDS, and to Brazil apart from some of the best known labs in India . This product has a worldwide market to tap, and we have developed it here in India . Here the drugs are affordable because of their generic nature, but the testing wasn't so," says Dr Bala Manian, the founder-CEO.
Then, lesser-known Mankind Pharma is rated among the fastest growing companies in its industry at a CAGR of over 60% in revenues. Last year, the company grossed Rs 515 crore in sales turnover. CMD RC Juneja says his success formula was to make drugs cheaper. That's how it becomes affordable for the masses. The results tell the story. Out of the Rs 150 crore organised market for erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs in India , his ED brand, Manforce, occupies the top slot with sales of Rs 50 crore.
The key is pricing—while Pfizer's global blockbuster Viagra retails at around Rs 350 a tablet, most other brands including Manforce sell in the Rs 20-25 range. Says Juneja: "In the past 13 years that we have been in business, we've managed to save consumers an estimated Rs 2,000 crore by forcing others to reduce their prices." Needless to say, Mankind has been ranked second in India after Glaxo on prescriptions per doctor per month as per the latest ORG-IMS audit data, while on secondary stockist sales value, it's at the fourteenth position.
Delhi-based Panacea Biotec has, meanwhile, made a name for itself in vaccines. The company has made vaccines that prevent Hepatitis-B, diphtheria and tetanus. "Our innovation has been in the way we have combined the chemical compounds," said a company spokesman. "We have made tetravalent and pentavalent vaccines for preventing Hepatitis B, and other diseases.
Panacea Biotec has received pre-qualification accreditation from the World Health Organisation (WHO) for the supply of recombinant Hepatitis B vaccine to UN agencies. The overall estimated market for Hepatitis-B vaccine is around $270 million in 2007, going up to $390 million in 2008 and $1 billion in 2009. In 2000, there were 5.7 million cases of acute Hepatitis-B infection and more than 521,000 deaths from Hepatitis-B- related disease, worldwide.
Rajesh Jain, the company's joint MD, has said that the strong vaccine sales and the inclusion in the list of prequalified suppliers of WHO has significantly enhanced their presence in the segment, resulting in higher sales and profits
The Indian biotechnology sector is generating revenues of about $2 billion that are estimated to reach $5 billion by 2010. The sector has been growing at 35-40% per annum for the last three years.
