Subir Roy: In search of a business model

In the early nineties, the major Indian pharma companies, particularly the top two, Ranbaxy and Dr Reddy's, took a major far-sighted decision. Led by Parvinder Singh and Anji Reddy, respectively, they shifted from lobbying to retain India's lax patents regime to arming their companies with a new vision. Ranbaxy adopted a mission statement in 1992 to become an international research-based pharmaceutical company and Reddy went around the country saying that it was possible to do original drug discovery work in India.

Made in India: A Study of Emerging Competitiveness (2005)

I had written those words with as much enthusiasm as the pathfinders of the Indian pharmaceutical industry had transmitted to the rest of the country. But earlier this month, Parvinder Singh's sons sold Ranbaxy to a Japanese pharmaceutical company. D S Brar, onetime managing director of Ranbaxy and Parvinder Singh's chief lieutenant, told the media after the sale that companies operating in the generics space were facing strong growth challenges. Obviously, in over 15 years, Ranbaxy had failed to graduate into a primarily research-based pharmaceutical company and found the pricing pressures sweeping the generics world too strong for comfort.

Anji Reddy, personifying the spirit of the times, had told the Indian Pharmaceutical Congress in 1993, "The issue before us is not