Bangalore: When Indegene Lifesystems Pvt. Ltd moves from its 11,000 sq. ft office in a residential area to a 25,000 sq. ft campus in the plush Embassy Golf Links Business Park in central Bangalore later this month, it will mark not only the doubling of its office space but also of opportunities in an area of work—competitive intelligence—that is fast becoming the pharmaceutical industry’s survival strategy.
In the last few months, Indegene has signed a so-called master service agreement with six of the top 10 global pharma companies and more are on the way.
Logical solutions: Indegene co-founder and chief executive Manish Gupta (left) and PharmARC chief executive Amit Sardana. Gopinath Nair / Mint
When drug maker Pfizer Inc. announced slashing of its sales force by 20% three years ago, it set a trend that most global pharma companies have followed. In the event, a little known tool in this industry, known as competitive/business intelligence or analytics, got a lease of life which many now consider key to cutting flab and optimizing resources in the global pharma industry, which is expected to have sales in excess of $750 billion (Rs37.12 trillion) in 2009, according to the market intelligence firm IMS Health.
A set of small Indian companies have come up in this space with products that are allowing the conservative pharma industry to finally farm out services such as deploying and structuring sales force, mapping new markets, analysing clinical trial data to the extent of the investigator details, even replacing the sales force.
“Competitive intelligence is below the radar right now, but all pharma companies, which have been laggards vis-à-vis other industries in adopting technology, will take to it,” says Venkatraman Thyagarajan, non-executive vice-chairman of GlaxoSmithKline India and a board member of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.
Traditionally, the marketing and commercial side of pharma companies, which has the highest spend of about 26% of annual sales of the company, doesn’t include technology, says Thyagarajan. “Now when they are asking, do we need to do everything ourselves, the contracting model is beginning to play out.”
And smaller companies are gaining. Indegene was approached by one of the top 10 pharma companies to develop an engaging alternate promotional and marketing channel for one of their key brands. Within five months Indegene built a multi-modal channel that provides Web-based medical information and education including interactive patient cases with branching logic, videos/simulations of patients, webcast events and more.
“This is meant to replace the sales force,” says Manish Gupta, one of the founders and chief executive of Indegene, which has revenue of about $20 million and is looking to acquire a US-based company in the field of medical education.