India’s pharmaceutical leaders deliberated vital issues like efforts for quality compliance, make in India in pharma sector, affordable health care and Indian pharma’s supremacy at the CEO Round Table organised as a part of second edition of Indian pharma week organised by UBM in Mumbai.

Most influential CEOs, Presidents & Founders from leading pharmaceutical companies, Policy Makers and Senior Representatives from Pharmaceutical Associations participated in the close door round table.

On the quality compliance issue, the industry leaders were of the opinion that approach towards quality compliance should be a behavioural priority with a bottom up direction. A distinction should be made between adherence and compliance and the focus should be on the former when it comes to ground level implementation. In this regards, the leaders opined that more collaboration between academia and the industry was required. An intrinsic link between the industry, government and educational institutions is also highly recommended, they felt.

After the round table, the media was briefed about the deliberations jointly by Mr. Sriram Shrinivasan, Partner, EY; Mr. Kewal Handa, Director, Salus Lifesciences; Dinesh Dua, CEO & Director, Nectar Lifesciences; D G Shah, Secretary General, Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance, S M Mudda, Director Global Strategy, Microlabs and Yogesh Mudras, Managing Director, UBM India.

Speaking to the media, Mudda said there was need to create quality management system. Shah said culture and behaviour are linked and they need to be nurtured. He said companies were becoming conscious on quality issue. Unless there were some failures they would not improve so it was good to have some failures in the initial phase.

On government industry relationship, Handa said industry should have mind set to align with government. He said SME was a priority of r the government. Funds were available for the MSE sector on the projct should be viable and there should be integrity of management.

Responding to a question on pricing issue, Dua said government was looking at manufacturing cost, but what about the distribution cost. Sriram pointed out that there were 8 to 10 different methods to control prices.

Mudras said, while India ranks amongst the top four pharmaceutical markets in terms of volume of produced drugs, certain challenges continue to surround its pharma industry. India faces issues including a time-consuming approval process, dependence on China for cheaper API sources, sub-optimal infrastructure, lack of funding avenues, and a shortage of highly skilled talent, among others.

Those who participated in the round table included

S V Veeramani, Chairman & MD, Fourrts (India) Laboratories Pvt Ltd; Prashant Nagre, CEO, Fermenta Biotach; Ranga Iyer, Former MD, Wyeth; Rajiv Gulati, Former President, Ranbaxy; Suresh Subramanium, Senior VP & Head, Branded Formulations, South Asia; Ashok Bhattacharya, Executive Director/ Country Manager, Takeda Pharmaceuticals India Pvt Ltd; Prof. Pierre Pienaar, President, WPO; Dev Prakash Yadava, Managing Director , Shardachem; Dr. G.M. Warke, Founder & CMD HiMedia Laboratories;  A. Vaidheesh, MD, GSK; Ziva Abraham, CEO, Microrite Inc;  Srinivas Lanka, Vice Chairman Pharma and Bio Taskforce, Andhra Pradesh Economic Development Board; B.G. Barve, Joint Managing Director, Bluecross Laboratories Pvt Ltd.