Druggist body to float consultancy firm

The All India Chemist and Druggist Association (AIOCD) is rolling up its sleeves to set up a pharma consultancy and data gathering firm on the lines of ORG-IMS Research.

AIOCD has tied up with Chennai-based Trikaal Medi Infotech and formed a new entity called Advanced Working Action and Collection System or AWACS meaning radar.

"In the next three years, we expect AWACS to have a revenue generation of Rs 250-300 crore. We are in talks with various consultancy firms for research and analysis," a senior AIOCD official told Business Standard. This also includes Ernst & Young and Accenture, who were advisers to AIOCD when it got corporatised.

AWACS has been working on the project for the last one year. So far, it has covered 14 states. In India, ORG-IMS data is the only firm that comes up with a monthly report on the pharma industry with in-depth analysis and research. Most of the leading pharma companies rely on ORG.

"We will roll-out the project commercially from June-July this year covering pharma data of all Indian states. Next week, we are launching a pre-trial of our collected data for three months wherein we will send our reports to major pharma companies for verification," said Amish Masudekar, director of AWACS.

AWACS has so far spent about Rs 10 crore for the project. "AIOCD has a strong chain of 550,000 members across the country and 150,000 wholesalers. We have been providing data to ORG all these years. This time, we thought of doing it on our own and this will add to our income too," said Jashvant Patel, president, Federation of Gujarat State Chemists and Druggists.

JS Shinde, honorary general secretary of AIOCD is the chairman of AWACS while Samshir Sheikh of Trikaal Medi Infotech is the CEO.

Patel said there would be a marked difference between ORG and AWACS data and it was for the industry to figure out which one they would want to go with. He cited an example of a Gujarat-based pharma major, which according to ORG had shown a 25 per cent growth but grew only 0.6 per cent according to AWACS.