Participating in the panel discussion were leading names from the Indian pharma industry, Dilip Shanghvi, founder & managing director, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries; Pankaj R. Patel, chairman, Zydus Cadila; Glenn Saldanha, chairman & managing director, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals; and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, executive chairperson, Biocon Ltd & Biocon Biologics Ltd. Making India a hub for clinical trials, taking steps to create a market in India for the innovative drugs, like is the case in China were some of the aspects dealt in detail by the industry leaders with clear and feasible plans to create an enabling environment. 

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said, “As a short-term measure, if we could delve into the 50, 000 crore National Research Foundation (NRF) that has been created and at least allocate half of that to industrial research of which pharma industry deserves a big chunk, that would help to ensure academic and corporate partnerships in research.” 

She further added, “We need regulatory reforms which the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) is coming out with based on the premise that they need to develop in terms of giving strategic boost to research and innovation in the country. There is a need to develop regulatory science and accelerated regulatory pathways which are not bound by strictures alone but one that ensures time-bound deemed approval processes. The coming new regulations, she pointed out, we’re in the direction of granting deemed approvals which, if put in place, could accelerate the process of innovation further. 

She further added that the government should provide risk capital grants and incentives like reintroduction of weighted tax deduction for drug innovation. She also suggested a patent box regime. 

To speed up innovation, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said that there was need to leverage the India’s strengths and make India an important global destination for clinical trials. India, she said, had good medical centres, CROs and clinicians and all the other elements that could be leveraged to make India a preferred destination for clinical trials. 

Glenn Saldanha, chairman & managing director, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals also felt that without government’s backing it would be very difficult to create an ecosystem. Agreeing with all that his co-panellists and friends from the industry said, Dilip Shanghvi felt optimistic that the Indian pharma companies had it in them to repeat their success in the innovation arena, the kind of impact they have been able to accomplish in the generic drug manufacturing. 

In his concluding remarks and agreeing with the other panellists, Dilip Shanghvi said, “in order to boost innovation in India, there is a need to streamline regulatory framework, incentivise research and development in such a way that India companies are encouraged to invest in high-risk research.” 

India, he also felt, needed to attract global companies to do research in India by creating an ecosystem to give opportunity to them to leverage their research both in terms of giving tax benefits and also easy access and freedom to price their products differently in India. 

Hopefully, some of the constructive and workable plans and policy measures suggested by the industry leaders will see getting reflected in the policy measures by the government as India stands at an inflection point in its growth journey in the pharmaceutical sector globally. It is today often referred to as the ‘pharmacy of the world.’ This is for the simple reason that it is a country that has the largest number of drug manufacturing facilities for tablets and pills outside the US as a result, the consumption of Indian made medicines is high globally. Or, seen in the context of the US, an attractive global market for pharma, one in every three pills consumed in the US is produced by an Indian drug manufacturer. Also, India is a major producer of vaccines. However, the pandemic has precipitated many unforeseen reversals but the only positive outcome has been a rapid ascent of healthcare into the mind space of policy makers along with a recognition of the importance of innovation. Leveraging the strengths that India already has and incorporating some of the measures suggested by the industry titans could go a long way to create that much-needed enabling environment for innovation.