Indian pharma tycoons foray into new drugs to shore up growth

June 14: Indian drugmakers are embarking on a research spending spree to master more complex therapies and their billionaire founders look willing to absorb the costs.

The goal? To reach more people like Ryan Matzner, an asthma patient who lives thousands of miles away in New York.

For years, the 31-year-old app developer has been a regular buyer of a pocket-sized purple disc made by GlaxoSmithKline that helps keep his airways from clogging.

The US patent on the device, called the Diskus inhaler, expires this year and some of India’s leading drug companies want a piece of the treatment’s $5.6 billion in sales.

But the puffer is more complex than it looks and their efforts to master it, and other tricky technologies, are driving unprecedented investments in advanced research.

The companies need to pursue more complex targets as prices fall for basic generic treatments.

Success at copying cancer therapies or injectable medicines promises greater profits overseas, and could drive India’s family pharmaceutical businesses for another generation.

“In order to grow they have to move up, or else probably stagnate,” said Hemant Bakhru, an analyst with UBS Group AG’s Indian unit, who covers the pharmaceutical industry from Mumbai.

Bloomberg