The Covid-19 pandemic has proved to be a global health crisis, whose cascading effect has already grappled the global economies. With multiple spread waves and new virus mutants, the hope for economic recovery seems to be imperceptible. The World Bank envisions a baseline forecast of 5.2 percent contraction in global GDP in 2020 which may plunge most countries into recession in 2020, with per capita income contracting in the largest fraction of countries globally since 1870. India alone lost Rs 32,000 crore ($4.5 billion) every day during the lockdown, slowing the economy at an estimated 8% by Fitch Ratings. Although all the sectors are seeing an impede in growth, the pharma industry has turned out to be the blue sky after the storm, with resilient capabilities and future potentials.

Now with the White House considering a temporary waiver of some Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) rules, India will be able to expand its vaccination exports and research capabilities to African markets without inviting any sanctions from WTO. Southern and western regions of Africa are the largest importers of Indian medicines. These include several generic drugs that cost only a fraction of those produced by Western companies.

The catastrophe has opened up the deep gaps in the interdependencies born out of globalization. The global supply chains have been disrupted and trade deals halted with zero global mobility. The crisis has upheld the urgency of self-sustaining economic war chest and has given a thrust to the Aatmanirbhar Bharat dream. It’s now clear that the world, including India, is so dependent on China for essential supplies of medicines. In fact, 50% of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) used in India are imported from China. This technically makes China control the prices and supply of these ingredients, which are used in generic drugs. Since generic drugs manufacturing compose 70% of the Indian pharma industry, this high concentration in supply chains has increased the unsystematic risks for the industry. However, this fact has proved to be a silver lining for the Indian pharma sector, which has established itself as a global leader over the last 50 years. During such unprecedented times, the world is looking towards India to provide an alternative for a supply viscous China and steer them through the pandemic.

India holds a fifth of all global manufacturing sites catering to the US market and is the only country with the largest number of Pharma plants that are US-FDA compliant. Moreover, the Indian API industry is ranked third largest in the world contributing 57% of APIs to prequalified list of the WHO. According to a McKinsey report, the driving factors for growing the domestic market in India are the accessibility and the affordability of drugs and quality healthcare facilities. The affordability of drugs will rise due to sustained growth in incomes and an increase in insurance coverage. The government has outlaid greater spending on healthcare and sponsored programs to break the bottleneck in the accessibility of standard facilities in Tier 2 & 3 cities.

Emulating China, India has approved 100% Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) under the automatic route for greenfield pharma and has introduced Production Linked Incentives of up to Rs 6,940 crore in 2020 to create global champions out of India who have the potential to grow in size and scale using cutting edge technology and thereby penetrate the global value chains. Moreover, a weighted deduction of 200 percent is available for scientific research on in-house R&D expenditure. Various state governments have recently come up with their healthcare policies to promote huge Bulk Drug Parks with a total financial implication of Rs 3,000 crore for 2020-2021. Uttar Pradesh, for instance, is emerging as a top industrial destination with investment-friendly reformative policy approach. Through these policies, the state puts the high impetus on creating manufacturing giants to compete for global standards in the international market.

These conducive measures are already proving buoyant for the sector. Substantiating the fact is the multi-growth cycle experienced by the top players in the industry. For instance, Divis Lab, which is a pure-play generic active pharmaceutical ingredients maker reported record sales in Q1FY21 with net profits rising 80.61 percent to Rs 492.06 crore. Large-cap and mid-cap companies like Aurobindo Pharma, Sun Pharma, Aarti drugs, Dr Reddy’s and Lupin, which have a huge API business stand to potentially benefit from this shift. Such anticipated growth has already priced in their share prices, which have skyrocketed as much as 80% in the last year. Companies like Macleods Pharmaceuticals Limited, Hetero Drugs, Dasami Labs Pvt Ltd are already exploring API manufacturing in India on account of efforts to increase the in-house manufacturing of intermediates and additional revenues from the new capex.

The tectonic shift induced by the pandemic, the change in the stance of the government towards the pharma industry along with the confidence of MNCs in the country has generated a plethora of opportunities in multiple sub-sectors, namely, API & generic drug manufacturing, vaccine development and production, clinical trial market and bioinformatics. India currently exports vaccines to about 150 countries and meets around 50-70% of the world’s vaccine demand. An estimated two out of every three immunised persons in the world have received a vaccine manufactured in India. Moreover, the best benefit of conducting clinical trials in India is the potential for cost savings. Clinical trials account for over 40% of the costs of developing a new drug. In India, the cost of conducting a trial here is lower by 50% than in Western Countries. The expertise gained in manufacturing generics through reverse engineering has helped the Indian pharma companies to streamline the process for getting manufacturing up and running. Costs here are only two-fifths of those involved in setting up and running a new manufacturing facility in the West due to significantly lower margins, given the low development and labour costs. To facilitate the storage, management, retrieval and analysis of large pools of data, a new subsector of the IT sector has emerged—bioinformatics. India’s existing knowledge capital in IT provides a natural base for the development of bioinformatics research and operations.

Although the total market size of the Indian pharma industry is expected to reach $130 billion by 2030, the Indian pharma industry is still valued as the 14th largest with its exports contributing to only 3.5 of the total pharmaceutical exports globally (by value). Indian pharma industry did well in formulations and indigenous medicines sector but with the gradual liberalisation and price ceiling policies (DPCO, 2013), the pharma market was flooded with cheap imports from China. The strict price control policies of the government neither allow the manufacturers to invest in R&D of new drug formulations nor does it ensure universal accessibility. Moreover, India spends only $120 per capita per year on infrastructure, which is one-tenth of what the top six countries, including China and Japan, invest on average $1,200.

India needs to work on the healthcare infra, medical training, more accommodative pricing policy, fast project clearances, improve quality standards of medical production and interlinked logistic systems to reach the pinnacle as the epitome of the medical hub. On apriority basis, ease of doing business needs to be improved for reducing the number of days of to a start a business, which is a major hindrance in the inception process. The Drug Price Control Order, 2013 needs to be revised to relax the norms of price ceilings to incentivise the drug companies to have indigenous API productions, instead of cheap imports. The logistics chain needs to be decentralised with local delivery centres and data driven systems for efficient supply-chains.

The pandemic has proved to be an inflection point in the growth of the Indian pharma industry, where for the first time, India is following the East-first policy to embrace self-reliance. However, to make the Aatmanirbhar discourse clear proactive interventions are need to ensure amicable international trade deals through indigenous supply chain and well-integrated logistics. With an anticipated Free Trade Agreement with US, everything boils down to the recourse policies which India will adopt to harmonise its efforts against the economic downturn.

Rajesh Mehta is a leading consultant & columnist working on Market Entry, Innovation & Public Policy. Uddeshya Goel is a financial researcher working closely with Rajesh Mehta on multiple projects. Views expressed are personal.

Former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh recently moved the Supreme Court seeking a CBI probe into the alleged corrupt practices followed by his erstwhile super boss, the Home Minister of Maharashtra, Anil Deshmukh. He alleged that the minister had called meetings with some of the officers reporting to him, at his residence, and given them a target of collecting Rs 100 crore every month from individuals and establishments such as hotels, restaurants, bars and shops. This is the story of just a few cops in Mumbai, leaving other departments in Mumbai and the rest of Maharashtra aside.

Transparency International, a global watchdog for corruption ranked India the 86th most corrupt country in 2020, out of 179 countries, according to perceived levels of public sector corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys.

In our system of governance, deviants and criminals manage to move up the echelons of political or even bureaucratic power because the state apparatus and its appendages, meant to arrest and nip corruption in the bud, are not geared to do so. Once the corrupt come to occupy positions of power, they also tend to manipulate laws and policies, and ensure that oversight of institutions such as the police is carried out in accordance with their interests. In such a scenario, forms of corruption get institutionalised, leading to wholesale criminalisation of the state with disastrous consequences for the public at large. 

The ‘Vazegate’ scandal is an example of such a scenario. Addressing corruption in the public sphere is therefore essential to ensure the legitimacy of the state, maintain public order and the rule of law, and maintain public trust in the state and its institutions. To achieve that, it’s imperative that the structures and institutions established to curb corruption have proper physical and human resource infrastructure, proper mentoring, motivation and recognition, and of course regular training of the personnel in new and emerging investigation procedures, including the use of ever-evolving IT tools.

How the technological breakthrough of DNA fingerprinting heralded a new paradigm in investigating heinous crimes may remind us not to neglect the whole new array of tools and apps that are commonplace in other walks of contemporary life. What had originally emerged as a method used to distinguish an individual from another, using a sample of one’s DNA’s unique patterns, was first employed in a criminal investigation in 1987 by the British police. This technique was developed in 1985 in the laboratory of the University of Leicester, Great Britain, just a few miles off the scene of the crime, where two teenage girls had been raped and murdered by a serial killer. The police had rounded up a 17-year-old mentally challenged boy, as the main suspect. However, DNA sampling not only proved the boy innocent, but also led to the real culprit, thus preventing a grave miscarriage of justice. Soon the investigative potential of the technique was recognised and rapidly embraced by police forces around the world, leading to the conviction of perhaps tens of thousands of criminals over the world.

By law, every state government in India has established anti-corruption bureaus or vigilance directorates. These bureaus/directorates have the express mandate to work for preventive vigilance apart from probing matters relating to corruption in the public sphere. This is where the latest in IT and science needs to find its way through the tools and techniques for intelligence gathering and investigative procedures that are swift, sure and empirically verifiable. A legal framework through the acts of 1860 and 1988 is already in place. What is required now is the enforcement of these laws in spirit and not just in letter. This can only come through when dedicated agencies like the state ACBs or the CBI and others are guided and led by leaders who are true professionals and empathetic in equal measure, ready to be guided by the core ideals of the Constitution of India, to which they take the oath of allegiance upon joining the public service.

We started off with Mumbai and Maharashtra. The other part of the former state of Bombay, now called Gujarat, makes for an interesting reference point. The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), Gujarat, during recent years, under the continuous and sustained leadership of its head, has displayed a never heard of 75% conviction rate. It had begun at just around 16% five years ago. Not only did the number of cases where the agency intervened increase substantially year on year, the conviction rates before the courts also jumped steadily through 25%, 41% to 75% on a year-to-year basis by 2020. The Gujarat agency caught on to the major factor of the delay between registering a case and the actual filing of a chargesheet before the court of law. By and large the law mandates a maximum of 90 days, however, the officers/offices all over India take much more time to do so. Ironically, no accountability is fixed here, which gives the accused and the witnesses a lot of time for ‘imagination’ and avoidance.  

The Gujarat ACB during the last two years registered about 225 cases per year, on an average, and succeeded in filing chargesheets in all cases within the stipulated period of 90 days. Constant monitoring, motivation, use of information technology, and an awareness drive through the media and word of mouth have helped the agency look at the menace in the eye. The focus of the agency on watertight evidence backed by using forensic science methodologies along with use of IT for information gathering, corroboration, and more importantly, monitoring by developing an in-house app has been the cornerstone of its working and efficacy. For example, an input about misappropriation of funds in the construction of johads, or farm tanks for irrigation, in the state was followed by geological mapping to find whether any such tanks were actually being dug and figure out how crores of rupees for the purpose were going missing. Apart from using DNA fingerprinting, the agency extensively uses layered voice analysis that uses the accused’s voice modulation to catch whether the accused is fibbing. 

The agency also uses the services of officers in government departments being probed, like the state PWD, land registration offices, banks and RTOs, to unearth benami properties, and engages a panel of lawyers and chartered accountants to verify financial transactions. The agency’s model of training and using interns from forensic sciences and law universities and students of other sciences like IT could be upscaled at the national level to support investigations besides professionally orienting university students and scholars. One of the landmark judgements of the Supreme Court, whereby the apex court widened the scope of the definition of “Public Servant”, was a result of a criminal case registered by the Anti-Corruption Bureau Gujarat, vide Prevention of Corruption Act, against the Trustee of Sumandeep Vidyapeeth, a Deemed to be University in Vadodara. The judgment is liable to be used by all states and the CBI at the national level.

The work done by the Gujarat ACB could lead us to the structural, procedural and systemic changes required to bring a pan-India change so that the country moves up the ladder in Transparency International’s rankings, notwithstanding how much we value such foreign agencies, their methodologies and motivations.

Indian Cricketer Mona Meshram, who made her debut in the Indian cricket team in the year 2012 and has represented India in many matches, recently joined NewsX for a candid conversation as part of its special series NewsX India A list. In the exclusive interview with NewsX, Mona talked about her journey so far, her career goals, and the importance of hard work and resilience in making it to the top.

Talking about her golden childhood years and her initial memories of playing cricket, Mona said, ”I belong from a sports family. When I was 5 years old, I got really interested in volleyball and started playing the game. I also used to participate in all the sports activities that were conducted in my school. My coach really saw the spark in me and selected me for the cricket team of school and I think that’s when my journey with cricket began. After that, I gave the trials for under-16, which I was selected for. I had scored 50 runs in my trials and then I played some tournaments as well. I told my mother that I want to play cricket and she was very supportive of my decision. Cricket is a costly game but my mother wanted me to pursue this field and I have seen some difficult days.”

Speaking about competition in the arena of cricket, Mona stated, ”I used to play for railway and some club matches. In 2016, BCCI initiated Women Cricket and that’s when I got the chance to play officially for the Indian team. In 2008, when I made my debut as a junior cricketer, there weren’t many matches for me to play for. We, as a team, would get 4 matches and couldn’t even qualify for some.”

Further talking about her entry in the official team, Mona revealed, ”In 2010, I got a very good opportunity. At that time, I was playing in the under-19 team and I had made a lot of runs, which helped the team in winning certain matches. That’s how I started to get more matches. We got into the finals but lost there but our performance was really good. After that, I was selected to play for Team India.”

When asked about her most memorable inning, Mona said that there have been many instances in matches that made her feel elated but the one with Ellyse Perry was amongst her favourite. ”Perry was very famous at that time and I hit some fours and sixes. I remember those innings till date as it was just the start of my career. I was really happy,” Mona stated.

Speaking about the contribution of her mother in the advancement of her career, Mona said, ”I wouldn’t have done it without my mother’s constant support and motivation. I still remember when I used to have my practice sessions, my mother used to come to the field carrying a tiffin and fed me with her own hands. She even used to do fielding during those sessions. She has helped a lot in my journey”.

On a concluding note, Mona shared a very important message for the viewers. Stressing on the importance of hard work, Mona asserted that Hard work is the key to success. ”If you work really hard, it gives you so much confidence and enables you to tackle any difficult situation. Give your 100% in the area that you want to improve yourself in. If you spend time on the ground, you will be able to understand cricket better,” she added.

Digraj Singh Shahpura, Director, Shahpura Hotels & Resorts, recently joined NewsX for a special conversation as part of NewsX India A-List. One of the top hotel chains in India, Shahpura Hotels & Resorts have striked a perfect balance between luxury and tradition. Built with world-class luxury and necessities, the hotels and resorts enhance guest experiences while embracing the royal tradition, culture, and customs of Rajasthan. 

Reflecting on his journey so far and how he began his career in the hospitality business, Digraj said, “In the initial years, when I was graduating, there was a time when I had to decide and see what’s next basically. I decided let’s step in there and see how it goes. That the first thing which I started and I started to develop a passion from there”.

When asked what sets their hotel chains apart from the other hotel chains, Digraj said, “I think there are two things that I would like to mention. One, coming from a family that knows about the heritage and also heritage with luxury, that’s what we’ve been focusing more on and giving that to our travellers, Apart from that, the personalised services what we give to the clients because our numbers are maximum 60 or 70 keys in every hotel. We make sure that request service is given to the client everywhere.”

“It has been part and parcel of our life and we’ve been doing it for long as we know what things are and how things run. See, the passion developed with the starting age and then I started to explore. I keep on travelling, keep on seeing the hotels around the world, seeing the best of the events and seeing why they are the best. That’s how you just learn and you come to know about things and that’s what we’ve incorporated now as an Indian”, he added.

He proudly extols the modern touch they have infused into their majestic hotels. Digraj expresses,“If travelling to hotels like Marriott and seeing these hotels, one can really see that luxury is what it is all about. People are there to pay, you just have to have the right product. We already have palaces, we have such good forts and beautiful buildings, which is a beautiful architecture in India itself. Not only in Rajasthan but all over India. It is just that you just have to market in the right place.”

Talking about the challenges they had faced last year, he said, “It was a hard time initially. We had to lay off employees, we had to cut down the cost and many precautions to be taken. It was a tough time but we are now talking about the future. We’ve been trying to dig out some new plans and we’re making new packages. I can tell you that I’ve been talking to my teams as recently as last week and we’re taking out some packages, which are called Day-cation packages for your staycation. It’s like a vacation. It’s for those kind of people who don’t travel and just want to use the hotels. With this, they always come in, use it for the day, use the luxury, use the spa and pay for that experience. ”

Umang Dua, Co-Founder, Handy and Chief Review Officer, ANGI Homeservices recently joined NewsX for a special conversation as part of NewsX India A-List. Recognised for excellence in home care services, Handy is the leading platform for connecting individuals looking for household services with top-quality, pre-screened independent service professionals. From home cleaning to handyman services, Handy instantly matches thousands of customers every week with top-rated professionals in cities all around the world. 

Reflecting on his journey to becoming the co-founder of Handy, Umang said, “I was at Harvard Business School and I was going to do a regular MBA programme. My roommate and I in 2012 started talking about ideas and one thing led to another. We both wanted to do something entrepreneurial. We started talking about an idea, which Handy eventually became. Handy is a platform for booking homeservices where people can go when they need something at home and within 60 seconds they can make a booking. This as a concept did not exist earlier. Usually you have to wait. We were trying to make it instant. There were two big jumps, one was to drop out of Harvard Business School and the second big jump was to start a business outside of India. We ended up starting it in New York.” 

He added, “We started in 2012 and it has been 8 years. The journey was fun with a lot of ups and downs. The thing with business is that you are always changing plans. We started in one city but became nationwide, across the US, in the UK, Canada and we ended up raising 110 million plus from all kinds of investors. It has been amazing to watch people use the service. You had an idea and now millions of people are using this idea and people getting value from it. It has been a very satisfying experience”. 

Speaking about ANGI Homeservices and the rationale behind it, he stated, “ANGI is a large public company, biggest home services, deep presence in the US itself and unlike Handy, it provides all kinds of services. As an entrepreneur,  you are always thinking about how can you just be quicker and reach more customers and thinking about the business strategically. The technology we had built and the ability to book services and we tried to bring everything together. It was a chance for us to go a little bit faster and do it with a partner”. 

When asked about his thoughts on becoming the Chief Revenue Officer at ANGI Home services, he expressed,  If you think about homeservices, there are about four to five hundred billion dollars spent every year just in the US. If you think about it globally, its trillions. No one has actually built a brand that has reached millions of people globally and I think this is a chance ahead of us. The more it became obvious to me, I told myself that we have the chance to build something truly iconic. I feel fortunate to be a part of Handy but lead ANGI”. 

2020 had been a difficult year for organisations around the world. Sharing how he spent his 2020, Umang said, “I remember I was sitting in my apartment and everyone was suddenly working from home. That in itself was a different experience. From a purely business perspective, people have spent a lot of time at home. Home services, as an industry, has done really well and we have just been grateful that we have built this platform and people can get these home services. Working for home for a large team has its own set of challenges and we all had to get used to that. We feel fortunate to be in that position and that is not something we could have predicted at all”. 

When asked about his views on the startup culture in India, Umang expressed, “The pace at which things are happening in India, companies are starting, companies are getting funded and create value for all the stakeholders has been incredible. The market, I mean, everything started to move online. We are seeing this accelerated pace across every industry and while I think it is easy to look at markets in the U.S. or other countries, you have to take into account the growth rates people are seeing in India and so I feel that the world is different than it was in 2012”. 

On a parting note, Umang shared his mantra of entrepreneurship and said, “If people are willing to start businesses in India, you obviously want to be thoughtful while you make sure you give the right amount of time. Think about the idea and who you are doing with it. The market is there and so is the opportunity. I don’t think there has been a better time than this so go for it”. 

Former Indian cricketer and prolific cricket commentator Reema Malhotra was part of NewsX’s special series NewsX India A-List. She talked about how her passion for the sport and women’s cricket has vastly changed in the last few years.

Reema Malhotra, known as an ‘all-rounder’, has made India proud on the world stage. She spoke about how women’s cricket has vastly changed in the last few years with a significant increase in terms of facilities as well as matches.

When asked about her journey of becoming a cricketer and representing India as a part of the women’s cricket team, Reema said, “I was not aware of women’s cricket team while I was playing multiple sports. I used to go along with my father who was a cricketer to watch his matches of Indian Airlines and from there, my interest aroused. I used to play street cricket with boys and then, there was only men’s cricket. I got selected for a baseball camp. The cricketers and coaches noticed me and told me about women’s cricket and they asked me if I was interested. I said yes and that was the beginning of my journey. I started playing cricket professionally from my college and I had debuted for India by then. It was in 2005 that I was selected for the World Cup and it was then that my profession and passion became one which was cricket. I was blessed with parents who supported me and were very encouraging, especially my father. I would also like to thank my mentor Diana for whom I am here today.”

According to her, the game-changing moment was her scoring back-to-back runs at the One Day Women League held in Chennai. She states, “That is when I understood that sports had made me tougher and I am made for this. I used to be happy when I scored runs and was appreciated. The happiness doubled when my parents also appreciated me for playing so well. I learned a lot from cricket. I was awarded for being an all-rounder and the highest runner. While travelling to Delhi I received a call that I was selected for the World Cup. That is when I realised that I had to fulfil my passion.”

Reema’s love for the game and passion has kept her going. She said, “I have always followed what makes me happy. Whenever I was in the field, I was happy. Cricket can give you success but also can lead to your failure and it is from cricket that I have learned that your failure on the platform can make you reach heights. During 2007, I was not playing for any of the teams. That was one of the lowest points in my life. While I was playing for the Indian Railway team, I could not bat so much and if you are not playing for the domestic then how will you be picked? But I never gave up and my parents have always supported me as they have taught me that falling down is part of life. I never looked back from that point and my family has played a vital role in this.”

Speaking about her journey as a commentator, Reema expressed, “I am loving this avatar. All of a sudden, I was selected to play for India and even this happened the same way. I had received a call from Star Sports when India had been playing in the semi-final and they wanted that to be covered in Hindi because my forte was that. I told them that I have never done that but they confidently told me that I am a part of the game. You know how the women’s team works and that is your forte. I still remember that moment and the Star Sports team helped me a lot. This is my second passion or innings”.

Throwing light on the state of women’s cricket in the country, she commented, “In 1983 men’s cricket, World Cup had been climbing the upper graph while it was in 2017 that Women’s Cup started following the same trajectory. After BCCI has come, many things have been changing for women’s cricket. Women’s T20 Challenge has also begun and in a few years, Women’s IPL will be played full-fledged. If you compare, there is a vast difference and now there is also the contract system. The graph is climbing up and if you take little steps, you will reach the heights and that is what BCCI is doing. Women’s cricket team have to be patient for a full-fledged IPL and this is a positive step.”

Reema also took this opportunity to congratulate Mithali Raj for scoring a record of 10,000 runs and the second woman to achieve this score world over. She stated, “The hard work and fitness that goes in to achieve this is difficult. Hats-off to Mithali. She is an inspiration to youngsters not only on the field but also off the field.”