hat is common between Pankaj Patel,
Chairman of India’s fourth largest drug firm
Cadila Healthcare (also known as Zydus Ca-
dila), and other doyens of India’s drug indus-
try like erstwhile Ranbaxy’s late Parvinder
Singh, Dr Reddy’s founder late Dr Anji Red-
dy and Lupin’s founder late Dr Deshbandhu
Gupta? All of them dreamt of inventing new
chemical drugs that would convert their
generic drug-making firms into original
innovator companies like Pfizer, Novartis
or GlaxoSmithKline. But that dream has
not been fulfilled yet and India’s first novel
chemical entity (NCE) reaping billions of
dollars is still miles away.
Drug discovery has been a tough ride for
Indian pharma companies. After Parvinder
Singh, sons Malvinder and Shivinder did
away with the company’s costly and risky
new drug pursuit. The same story played
out at Dr. Reddy’s. Even before Anji Reddy’s
death, son Satish Reddy and son-in-law
G.V. Prasad had put new drug research
programmes on the backburner. At Lupin,
founder Deshbandhu Gupta’s son Nilesh
and daughter Vinita decided to focus on
developing specialty drugs and short-term
big business from the US rather than spend
heavily on NCEs.
New drug research is not easy. It not only
takes 10-15 years of research but also over
a billion dollars to bring the drug to global
NEW
FORMULA
Zydus Cadila, India’s fourth-largest drug company by
revenue, is banking big on research of new drugs, even
though others have bowed out. Zydus expects the new
drug business to grow to `3,500 crore in four-five years.
ByP.B. JAYAKUMAR
PHOTOGRAPHS ByNANDAN DAVE
W
60 IBUSINESS TODAYIAugust 11 I 2019
