Amitabh Dube of Novartis India on his journey from med rep to Big Pharma man
Novartis India’s president and MD on his belief that AI can lead to faster diagnoses, why Big Pharma doesn't deserve its reputation, and his love for Vietnam
It’s a coincidence, says Amitabh Dube, country president and managing director of pharmaceutical company Novartis India, that his son’s name is Abhishek. “It was only later that we realised that, oh, we missed Jaya and Aishwarya in the family," he adds, grinning, in reference to the famous family in films.
At the Chambers, on the 25th floor of the Taj Land’s End in Mumbai, Dube is seated with his back to the large glass windows that face the ocean. The once uncluttered view of the sea, now diminished by the building blocks of an upcoming addition to the bridge over the sea, is still spectacular, though such a view is, ironically, rare in a city by the coast. “We are a family of four ‘mads’," he says, referring to wife Anupama and daughter Avantika, who is headed to Singapore for an MBA, and how they all have the same initials (with honorifics).
The 55-year-old, wearing a dark jacket and round glasses, has spent a lifetime in the volatile, complex world of the pharmaceutical industry. India is a major producer of generic medicines, vaccines and affordable drugs, working in a strong regulatory framework that tries to balance cost-effectiveness with quality. It’s the world’s third largest pharmaceutical industry by volume, accounting for 20% of the global supply of generic drugs, according to data from the government’s department of pharmaceuticals.
Novartis, a global healthcare leader, which has maintained a presence in India since 1947, runs Novartis India Ltd, a publicly listed arm with a market cap of over ₹19.2 billion (FY25), alongside Novartis Healthcare Pvt Ltd. Novartis has hubs in Hyderabad and Mumbai for clinical development, research, regulatory affairs and safety monitoring. Its global capability centre in Hyderabad—one of the largest in the country—supports IT, manufacturing, and analytics worldwide.
“I’m optimistic that next five years are going to be different from an access and landscape perspective," says Dube. “There’s more receptiveness towards hearing an idea, and there’s also strong execution. Over a period of time, we’ll have more scope of coverage, a balance for innovative industry to flourish and a strong presence of the generic."
“I’m not against the generic industry," he clarifies when asked about patent laws, lawsuits and debates over generic drugs. “What I believe is that we should have high-quality generics along with innovators. That is why patent life comes in because patent life is time where innovators’ investments gets rewarded and helps them to invest further."
Dube was raised in Varanasi, where his father was a professor of mechanical engineering at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU). The three of them—including an older sister and younger brother—grew up in this academic environment, barring a few years spent in Birmingham, UK, where the senior Dube went for a PhD.
From an early age, Dube wanted to be a doctor, but qualified neither for medicine nor engineering. “If you don’t qualify for both, then you’re a bit lost, wondering what’s next for you," he says of the 1980s, when academic choices were fewer.
His father was keen that he did not drop out, so he did a bachelor’s degree in science and a master’s in biochemistry, both from BHU. He considered going to the US for a PhD, but didn’t get a scholarship, so the doctorate got postponed.
A job with the Swiss multinational healthcare company Hoffman-La Roche as a sales representative in Lucknow got him a foot into the pharma industry, with the intent of working for a short period of time before going back to academics. “But once you start working," says Dube, “you start enjoying it, I don’t think there’s a point of return after that." He also grew to love the job as the next best thing to practising medicine, and three decades later, the idea of a PhD remains a foggy memory.
His job was to meet oncologists, which Dube did for a year-and-a-half in Lucknow from 1994. He got transferred to Delhi as Nicholas Piramal India Ltd acquired Roche India’s domestic formulations and nutrition business.
The Delhi move came with the added responsibility of handling institutional and government businesses, which gave him the opportunity to work with policymakers. In the late 1990s, when Hoffman-La Roche returned to India with a tie-up with Nicholas Piramal, Dube became the new venture’s “fourth employee".
His role was to work with government stakeholders to handle public affairs, launch Roche’s business through a distributor model in Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and oversee scientific operations. “I swam in areas where I was uncomfortable, dealing with government stakeholders, lobbying… but the more you learn to swim in deep waters, the better a swimmer you become," he says.
He performed multiple roles at Roche—in operations, distribution, corporate affairs—and worked in Lucknow, Delhi and Mumbai before moving in November 2010 to Novartis India as business unit head. His incentive in making the move was to create “something strong in oncology", having witnessed the efficacy of Roche’s cancer drug Interferon and Novartis’ Gleevec.
While Novartis was not as well-known as Roche in the oncology sector, what encouraged Dube’s move was a patient-centric approach, a strong pipeline and the Asia-Pacific regional head Francis Bouchard’s mentorship. So he moved from “Roche, with a roughly $60 million invested in oncology, to Novartis, with $5 million; from a team of 200-plus people working in oncology to 30 people."
“I’m not attracted by the size of the business," he says. “I am more attracted to what I can create over a period of time to transform, impact lives."
Over the span of seven years, from No.7, Novartis became one of the biggest companies in oncology in India, says Dube. As the country head for oncology and head of marketing for Asia, Dube, based for a few months in Singapore, had the opportunity to travel to Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam and other parts of the region. In the middle of the lockdown in April 2020, he was offered a move to Vietnam as country head for oncology.
“The initial months, while India was already peaking in July-August in 2020, Vietnam had no masks (as they closed their borders quite early on), a normal life once outdoors," he says, in admiration of one of his favourite countries.
In the two years he spent there, Dube grew to love the country, its people, strengthening his cultural adaptability, becoming the chair of the industry association in Vietnam before a return to India as country president came into reckoning.
I ask him about the negative image of big pharma in public perception as a profit-chasing industry, an image also driven by popular culture of Hollywood movies like Sweet Girl (2021), which I had coincidentally—and unfortunately—seen the previous evening. Some of the criticism of big pharma has also played out over the last five years, triggered by the pandemic, the vaccine and the global human tragedy.
Dube gives the example of Gleevec which, he claims extends the lifespan of chronic myeloid leukaemia patients by 8-10 years. “Today, people live 30 years with chronic myeloid leukaemia. Last year, we launched a third generation, which is a stamp inhibitor, where 50% of patients after four years of treatment will never require further treatment."
This, he says, is only possible because they are able to constantly innovate. “If we don’t have that, we will never be able to fight the diseases. There’s always going to be a tussle between access and innovation," he says, mentioning the covid vaccine, “because innovation is not going to happen so easily and it’s costly to innovate."
“When you look at science, they’ve only been able to decode 5-10% of the diseases; there’s still more which needs to be decoded," says Dube, also the president-elect of Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI).
His years spent in oncology gives him a perspective on why we have not been able to cure cancer. It’s a disease which involves multiple pathways, he explains, adding that the immune system and human body are extremely complex. “You find one way to stop a pathway, which multiplies the cancer cells, the cancer cells are smart enough to find another pathway to grow. So a cancer treatment requires multiple pathways, multiple treatments."
That’s why there’s so much importance and emphasis on health check-ups, because early diagnosis significantly improves outcomes for cancer treatment. “But it’s such a complex disease that it’ll still take time and a huge amount of research to get potential better outcomes and cure for cancer," Dube adds.
Novartis has about 12,000 associates who work in drug development, almost 2,500 based out of India. So all the clinical trials, protocols, evaluations, preparations, every pipeline molecule that is coming out has a touch point in Hyderabad, in the India operations. There are roughly a hundred active clinical trials for new drugs running in India, with 2,500 plus patients enrolled.
Dube is an avid supporter of artificial intelligence—broadly digital interventions—because he believes over time, they will lead to faster diagnosis.
“When I started as a representative, I used to go to a doctor with a bulk of literature and give him printouts. Today, my rep goes with an iPad and he has all communications available. His efficiency is far more there.... AI is going to help us to fast-track research, innovation, diagnosis, with better outcome for patients. That’s why I believe AI is not going to be optional, it’s going to be mandatory. People with better AI skills will be more sought out in the years to come."
Arun Janardhan is a Mumbai-based journalist who covers sports, business leaders and lifestyle. He posts @iArunJ.
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