Dr Reddy’s Laboratories to redesign packaging of its brands

Hyderabad: Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd (DRL) on Thursday said it will be redesigning the packaging of its popular generic brands in India as part of a patient-centric initiative called Purple Health.

Dr Reddy’s is using a new design for five of its brands and will extend that to 25 brands, the drug maker said on Thursday.

The company said the brands with newly designed packaging will be marketed in a phased manner over the next six months.

The company said it had tied up with California-based design and consulting firm IDEO and took feedback from doctors and pharmacists to redesign its syrup bottles and blister packs to make them patient-friendly.

“Traditionally, pharma packaging has been designed to meet technical and regulatory requirements and not so much to address patient convenience,” Dr Reddy’s said.

Based on that insight, the company has redesigned the blister packs and syrup bottles it sells in India, the company said.

Dr Reddy’s said it plans to extend the new packaging design to other emerging markets, including Russia.

The redesigning exercise is expected to increase its pharma packaging cost by about 20% but there will be no increase in retail prices, the company said.

As part of the repackaging, blister packs would have extra space for the brand name which ensures easy identification at the pharmacy, a tab at the bottom with the expiry date clearly mentioned and a pictorial representation of the time of the day the medicine needs to be taken; the patient just has to tick the right box and doesn’t need to refer to the prescription time and again.

In case of bottles, the measuring cup is now easy to read and clean, and the neck of the bottle has been modified to ensure minimal spillage.

This initiative is in line with the announcement of a patient-centric approach Dr Reddy’s made a year ago. The company changed its catchline to ‘Good Health Can’t Wait’ from ‘Life, Research, Hope’ in 2015.