Indian pharma companies are roping in new talent both from within the country and abroad as a measure to meet the mounting challenge of regulatory compliances, a top executive of a leading pharmaceutical firm said here on Monday.
Compliance challenge
Stating that the big challenge facing the Indian pharma industry is one of compliances, Natco Pharma vice chairman and CEO Rajeev Nannapaneni said the expectations were rising by the day. “The way we are dealing with it is by getting new talent, from outside India [too] which helps keep us in the loop and improve our standards,” he told a panel discussion organised at HICC here, ahead of the BioAsia inauguration.
Mr. Nannapaneni, who traced Natco Pharma’s growth as one of the leading oncology players and took queries from the floor, said quality expectations had also risen quite a bit over a period of time.
“What was acceptable four, five years ago is not acceptable today,” he said, adding one way of handling this was to “keep upping your game every year and every time. We have to be constantly vigilant of what the trends are. Another way is to have multiple [production] facilities. If one facility has issues than you always have backup of going to another”.
The number of adverse comments [from regulatory agencies], however, has dropped compared to what it was a few years ago. Indian pharma companies, barring a few expectations, are “well compliant and doing a good job. I can confidently say what the expectations are and [we are] striving to meet them”.
Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories chairman K. Satish Reddy spoke on how DRL emerged from a bulk drug company into a pharma major. It deployed a combination of strategy over time, including a focus on human resources, scaling up, building capabilities, both organically and inorganically, as well as striving for process and executional excellence.
CMD of ATGC Biotech Markandeya Gorantla highlighted the work of his company in the area of pest control.
The panel discussion followed the signing of an MoU between the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Telangana Industrial Health Clinic Ltd for hand-holding and providing expertise mainly in financial and operational restructuring to MSMEs in the region.