The acquisition, announced in April 2014, follows Elanco's purchase of Lohmann Animal Health earlier in 2014. Both strategic investments position the company to offer a more diversified product offering and capabilities to help customers sustain and grow their businesses. This includes the flagship brands customers have come to expect from Elanco, but also a comprehensive portfolio of nearly 300 brands encompassing therapeutics, vaccines, parasiticides, antimicrobials, surgical, enzymes, food safety and more.

"Elanco's acquisition of Novartis Animal Health brings together two strong companies with a passion for serving the customer," said Dr Velisetty Ashok Kumar, Country Director, Elanco India Private Limited. "We will continue to offer the products our customer's trust, while significantly investing in the development of new solutions to meet our customers' greatest unmet needs. We'll continually seek innovative ways we can support our customers' business. With increased technical services, that combine our analytic and benchmarking tools with on-the-ground support, we'll be able to spend more time with individual customers seeking innovative solutions that can make a difference in their business."

Going forward, Elanco will significantly increase investment in research and development, bringing greater breadth and depth to an already strong pipeline. The combined organization will have expanded capabilities and expertise with a broader portfolio of more than 100 product development projects focused on enhancing care and extending quality of life of pets, while preventing disease and protecting from parasites. It is also aimed at protecting livestock from disease and parasites, improving animal well-being and reducing the environmental foot print of livestock production. The company also aims at providing a broader set of solutions in areas such as enzymes, diagnostics, aquaculture and vaccines.