Dr Reddy's CEO for double-digit spending on R&D

The country's pharmaceutical sector is currently spending 6-8% of the revenues on the R&D

 

Dr Reddy’s Laboratory’s chairman and chief executive officer GV Prasad today said the Indian pharmaceutical industry needed to move up the value chain from the present generic drug maker position by spending double-digit or even more percentage of the revenues on research and innovation.

The country’s pharmaceutical sector is currently spending 6-8 per cent of the revenues on the R&D, though higher compared with what other sectors spend, but not sufficient to grow into an innovation-driven industry, according to him.

“The size of the global pharmaceutical industry is probably around $ 1 trillion that includes both innovation and generics while the Indian companies are still confined to the latter part of the business,” he said, adding wealth or value creation achieved through knowledge and innovation was much larger than from simple dependence on cost arbitrage.

Apart from cost arbitrage, wealth creation in the country in general had been through crony capitalism in the past decade and the time perhaps is right to look for innovation and ideas as the Indian political spectrum too has started seeing fresh ideas in the form of Aam Aadmi Party, according to him.

“When was the last time a politician spoke of honesty in this country? Arvind Kejriwal did now,” he said.

The information technology (IT) industry was still a small pie compared with the actual opportunity that existed in the sphere of innovation and ideas as was proven by modern-day companies in the US, Prasad said while delivering a keynote address on value creation through innovation at the BITS Pilani global alumni summit here.

The second global alumni meet of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) began at its Hyderabad campus on Friday to mark its golden jubilee celebrations. Over 1,000 past students, including some from first batch of 1950s, are present st the three-day event.

He also said the country required an ecosystem to drive innovation. Institutions of higher learning of the status of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) of the US would play an important role in building such an ecosystem. Unfortunately in India, most of the universities had become training centres or centres of mass production of graduate certificates, he said.