Mumbai: India's pharmaceutical companies, having conquered generics, must now pursue partnerships, collaborations and licensing deals to drive innovation at scale, industry executives said on Tuesday.
During a panel discussion at the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance’s Global Pharmaceutical Quality Summit in Mumbai, Dilip Shanghvi, founder and executive chairman of the country’s largest drugmaker, Sun Pharma, said that the industry has been taking tentative steps towards innovation. “People are making investments to create capacity within their organization to manage innovation, so that at a certain point of time, we can become an equally important player globally in terms of innovative products,” he said.
“But I still don't see innovation at scale…We are very tentative in terms of that investment,” he said. The way to manage a generic drugs business and an innovative drugs business are very different, Shanghvi emphasized, saying that the latter requires a recalibration of “our thinking process and our process of taking investment decisions”.
The discussion, featuring Shanghvi alongside Aurobindo Pharma whole-time director Madan Mohan Reddy, Lupin managing director Nilesh Gupta and Zydus Lifesciences managing director Sharvil Patel, focused on a growing industry consensus: Indian pharma must move up the value chain to develop innovative drugs.
Zydus was one of the early starters—with the company focusing on research and innovation as early as 1995. While it has developed strong in-house capabilities, collaboration will be key for scale, said Patel. “When I say innovation at scale, it doesn't mean that we have to discover everything ourselves. We can co-create, collaborate, license, partner, co-develop and there are so many ways by which we can create in India both these ways,” said Patel.
It's not just about working with other companies, but also with academic institutions, scientific advisory boards, regulatory bodies, and more, Shanghvi added.
Early winners to build confidence
The panel highlighted the importance of early winners to increase conviction. Gupta pointed to Ranbaxy and Dr Reddy’s as among the first to challenge patents in the US, bringing conviction as well as an understanding of research and manufacturing quality for the entire industry. Similar early starters are needed for innovative bets to build conviction. The industry needs a lot more stories, a lot more successes, he said. Citing Glenmark’s landmark $700 million licensing deal with US-based drugmaker AbbVie last year, Gupta said, “We need ten more of these to really build conviction for people to say they are all in”.
Shanghvi agreed with Gupta. “I am a strong believer that once a few Indian companies succeed, you can see a much higher level of confidence in the other companies that if they can do it, we can also. So I'm waiting for that positive cascade of innovation to happen,” he said.
The executives agreed that the domestic industry already has several capabilities needed for the pivot. But sustaining global trust remains essential. “The challenges that you see today for the pharma industry, one of the big challenges is the global trust. We need to sustain this trust because today we have a good name in the industry,” said Reddy of Aurobindo Pharma.