Entry barrier for pharma companies in India is too low: Bharat Serums & Vaccines' Sanjiv Navangul

Sanjiv Navangul has led a host of global pharmaceutical companies to operational success and served as the vice-president of the Organization Pharmaceutical Producers of India, a network of MNC pharma companies.

In this chat with Moneycontrol, the managing director and CEO of Bharat Vaccines and Serums speaks about the focus areas of his company, plans for the future and the need for tighter regulation in the pharmaceutical industry. Edited excerpts:

What are the therapeutic areas BSV focuses on?

Ours is a 50-year-old company, which started as a plasma firm and diversified in many things but basically, there are four principal areas of work, which include critical care, emergency medicine, women’s health, and fertility. And our deep specialisation is in women's health and critical care. For example, we have immunoglobulin products to help an RH negative mother, in case she was to have an RH positive child as there could be contamination of blood which could turn poisonous. We are the only company globally that makes it in India.

Also, we are the only company in the world that makes the recombinant and the monoclonal version of the drug. We have many such unique products. We have a US Food and Drugs Administration-approved active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) plant in Germany that makes some advanced fertility hormones for supplies to the US and Japan with very stringent import norms. Overall, we export our products to nearly 70 countries across the world.

What would you say is the strength of your firm?

India needs high-quality biotech companies as there are none or hardly any, so one of our dreams is to make high-quality biotech products and we are working on that. Secondly, we are passionate about women’s health and want to offer products that nobody else does. For instance, we are already making some recombinant fertility hormones that few players do globally.

Now, within the next one year, our goal is to launch recombinant versions of all five female fertility hormones and once we are able to do that we will be ahead of everybody. These are huge leaps in science that we are taking as a country. Our sole focus should not be to copy somebody else’s product and make it in India.

What do you think of the government intervention in the biopharma sector?

In the last three years or so, the government has been very active. There were errors done in earlier times—for example, there was API price control put in place and in a way that diverted India’s API industry to China. But now with schemes such as the performance-linked incentives (PLI) scheme for the pharma industry, many new players are ready to manufacture.

We also see that the government is interested in trying to promote research, so they're looking at how they can help research-oriented companies in the country. Also, the industry’s voice is being heard and the government seems to be realising that health security is as important as defence security.

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Recently, the government received a lot of flak when the World Health Organization named cough syrups by an Indian drugmaker behind the deaths of nearly 70 kids in Gambia. Your thoughts?

I don't know so much of the case for me to comment in detail but I would say only this much the stricter we are with standards, the easier it is to keep in step with the global standards and the better products we will make.

Today, the entry barrier in our industry is low for people to make medicines. Many times when we export our products, we actually give them for testing to the government labs, certify them and then send. But I don’t think many others do that. I think most of the big companies take care of quality operations but for smaller companies, it may be a problem due to the investments required.

What do you think of India’s position as one of the largest generic drug makers globally?

I'm not sure it's a great thing—while we supply a larger amount of the global volume we have only 2 percent of the global value. You have to join the innovative chain to become a big country and really make your voice heard globally. It may be the easy part to make a tablet that can sell anywhere but emphasising on R&D is a different ball game and we are proud that we have taken the hard route.