Indian Pharmacies - A Background

Indian pharmacies are just a part of the global pharmaceutical industry which is expanding worldwide, especially in Asia. Following the favorable dynamics of the economies on that part of the globe, the industry in China, India, as well as Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand is registering high growth rates. In regards to Indian pharmacies, the country is becoming more and more a major pharmaceutical destination for an industry that is adjusting itself to the transformations of the world economy. Thanks to the low operational costs of its well developed infrastructure of production, qualified staff and extensive research units, buying from Indian pharmacies has become an inarguably cost-effective way for consumers to obtain their medications from reputable and established resources.

Future Development

Drivers of growth in India's internal pharmaceutical market is found in the increase of the population and the expansion of the middle-class favored by the blooming economy. According to UN estimates, the population total looks set to rise from 1.1 billion at present to 1.4 billion in 2020. Up until 2020 India will see as many children being born as there are people living in Germany, France, the UK and Italy together. By 2025, India will probably have overtaken China as the world's most populous country. Already today, nearly 60 million people in India’s middle class, with disposable incomes up to US 25,000 per year can afford western-produced medicines. Until 2025 their number looks set to rise to approx. 580 million, according to McKinsey estimates.

The Future Of Pharmacy - Generics And Healthcare

India’s pharmaceutical industry has been re-aligning itself for several years now. An important landmark in recent years has been the changes to drug patent legislation in 2005. Prior to that, only the manufacturing process of a drug was protected by copyrights - not the substance itself, a measure introduced in the seventies by the Government of India to promote the domestic market, since the population was unable to afford highly priced foreign drugs. Indian drug producers could copy expensive original preparations of foreign firms to create generics by means of alternating production procedures. This awarded the Indian pharma an extraordinary grow, making it able to address the local market needs with surpluses that facilitated exports. The Indian Pharmaceutical Industry developed advanced know-how in reverse engineering and means of manufacturing and gained expression locally and abroad.

So, as a result of the 2005 patent legislation, Indian drug firms could no longer simply copy medicines with foreign patents. The patent expiration dates must now be respected before the drugs can be replicated. As such, the country’s pharmaceutical industry is reorienting itself. It now focuses also on drugs developed in-house and contract research or contract production for western drug makers. However, generic drugs are expected to remain at the core of almost all the Indian pharmaceutical industry. In the next five years, an approximate US 100 billion value in blockbuster drugs will be coming out of patent. India has a leverage in this scenario, and roughly one-third of this market share will likely be produced by Indian companies.

All the while, the world economy is also undergoing profound changes. The cost for healthcare in the developed countries, in particular in US, is forcing the insurance companies to look for alternatives to ease costs. As such, the preference for generic drugs is on the rise. Recent trends suggest that the use of generic drugs worldwide is growing annually by 14%, which is 8% faster than prescription, or branded products. The generic market today forms 75 per cent of the US pharmaceutical industry compared to 5 per cent in 1984. Generic prescriptions as a percentage of total prescriptions stand at 47 per cent in the US (up from 18.6% in 1984), 49 per cent in Germany, 52 per cent in the UK, 40 per cent in Canada, 11 per cent in Japan, and 5 per cent in France (WHO 2004).

India is strategically situated to absorb the demand of pharmaceutical companies looking for a cost-cut through outsourcing its various stages of drug development. Considering its large infrastructure developed throughout the years of reverse engineering and mass production, along with its modern centers of research, and its increasing qualified pool of English-speaking work force, India is poised to become a major player in the global arena of the pharmaceutical industry in the years to come.