It is the twentieth anniversary of the new patent act in January 2025. The post-patent (P20) era is a story of resilience, determination, and charting a course that set global ambitions, a story of finding opportunity in adversity. It is a story for case studies in business schools, in international studies, in global health efforts.
Editor's Note - This issue of MedicinMan is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Tarun Gupta, TG as he was fondly called. Executive Editor, Salil Kallianpur, dear friend Subrato Banerjee and long-time MedicinMan patron Vivek Hattangadi, pen their tributes to TG.
To be able to measure the RoI on digital in pharma, it is necessary to understand customers as individuals and create newer segmentation based on these needs and interests. This calls for the NextGen RCPA of data collection and personalized communications that engage customers, based on which pharma must create customer experiences that matter to them.
If your content does not scratch, where it itches the customers, digital or phygital, customers will not feel at home (comfortable, delighted, and wants more), which is what matters. Not a digital euphoria, which will soon die down as customers simply ignore it as they did when pharma launched a plethora of webinars.
DigiStorm 2018 was held on 11 September at the Lalit Ashok in Bangalore. The event was headlined by Prabir Jha – President & Global Chief People Officer, Cipla. Deep Bhandari – Editorial Board Member, MedicinMan, gives us the highlights of the post-lunch session.
Q 1. Tell us about your journey as a pharma entrepreneur and what made you venture into pharma and stay on in pharma?
My journey started with two good decisions, one- to be a Medical Representative (MR) in Mumbai, which built a strong foundation and the other, to join Helios, a new pharma company, which was like a baptism of fire. Together, they molded me well.
I was promoted as a Front Line Manager (FLM) within a year. And after spending four excellent years in Helios, I joined Group Pharma as Product Manager (PM) and ever since, it’s been an exciting learning experience.Â
I was exposed to Pharma very early in life as my dad was in J L Morison, as part of the promoter-team of Warren Pharma. At home, I was the designated telephone operator and order processing clerk. Those were the days of trunk-calls - calling managers and distributors to note down orders. Hence, I was exposed to the excitement of targets, achievements, deficits and campaigns very early in my life. The idea of ‘work-life balance’ was not in vogue. One would look to their parents who worked long hours with pride making it something you wanted to emulate. Things have changed a lot but I would not trade the decision I made, to get into and stay in Pharma.
The Indian Pharmaceutical Market (IPM) was valued atRs. 10,025 crores in the month of July 2016 clocking a 14.7% growth over same period last year (SPLY). This was the first time ever the market crossed the 10,000 crore mark in a single month.