PTI

New Delhi: Promoters of India’s leading drug firm Ranbaxy may consider consolidation as the name of the game in the pharmaceutical sector, but biotech major Biocon Chairman and Managing Director Kiran Mazumdar has ruled out selling off the company in her lifetime.

“As a first generation entrepreneur, the emotional attachment to the company is very strong and I think in my lifetime I would like to grow this company myself,” Biocon CMD Kiran Mazumdar Shaw told Sahara Samay Netowrk in an interview.

Her statement comes in the wake of Ranbaxy promoters selling off their entire stake for Rs10,000 crore.

“I think usually when you look at merger and acquisition, it is the next generation who are not so emotionally tied to the company that they look at it more pragmatically, a business kind of proposal,” she said.

Speaking about the recent trend in the sector she said, “There are lot of things happening in this particular area of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and there are companies which have basically felt that may be in order to grow, may be an M&A approach is a much safer and better way of doing that.”

She, however, said there were huge challenges and uncertainties, associated with risks ahead.

“The whole sector is in the state of flux where you know people are risk averse, people want to find very instant solutions to these kinds of challenges,” she added.

Price control

While speaking on the issue of price control in pharma sector, she suggested of a tendering process instead of a strict price control by the government for ensuring supply of medicines at affordable prices in the country.

“We must have a price control mechanism. I don’t think it should be done through a policy or mandate. It should be done through a tendering process, is should be done through a large government tenders, large corporate tender,” she said.

She, however, made it clear that price control or any such attempt is not good for the domestic pharma industry.

“I am averse to any kind of controls, price control is not something that is really that you need to foster on the industry. I think competition itself takes care of pricing,” Shaw said.

She also said it was unfair to target only the pharma industry for high healthcare costs as “drugs constitute only 15 per cent of the total healthcare cost.”

“Hospitals are not being targeted to control their hospital rates, doctors are not being targeted to control their fees so why is this industry being targeted,” she noted.