Guest Lecture by Mr. Naresh Katara

The students of SIMSREE had an opportunity on the 25th of March 2013 to have with them Mr. Naresh Katara, Director, Selling Excellence & SFE ,GSK Asia at GSK. He benefited the students by informing them about the Pharma market, India and abroad; and about the company GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals.

The pharma scenario of the country is changing; people are now ready to spend on quality. 900 BILLION USD is the global pharma market. Sir talked about the high rates of drugs outside India owing to the patents and astronomical amounts of money spent in R & D. He also threw light on the emerging medical tourism and the foreigners coming to India for a few surgeries due to the affordable prices. He helped the students with some statistics and facts regarding the top pharma companies in India and globally. He also told that the medical expenditure per person in Asia is expected to be more than double between now and 2020 to almost equal levels with USA. Thus the Pharma market is rapidly growing. However, the medical expenditure in India is just around 0.3% of our GDP.

He , then talked about the patenting and generic drugs. He explained the phases a drug needs to pass to finally enter the market and hence the importance of patents for encouragement of new drug delivery. Also, there is generic jumping after the patent expiry. Then he differentiated between the pharma market of India and China; and Brazil and Russia.

Coming to the Indian Pharma, he informed that it is an 11 billion USD market. There are 250 large manufacturers, 3000 pharma manufacturers and 4,60,000 is the workforce. India produces 105 of the global drug output. He also told us the reasons of the growing market namely, increasing literacy, increasing per capita income, improved health care access and increased market penetration.

Then he talked about the marketing methods of pharma companies, including surrogate marketing. Brand building is the key driver to growth by increasing demand and access. The question and answer session followed and he satisfied the students by giving good answers to their queries.

The session was indeed a very insightful one and we look forward to such sessions.