Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Trend spotting: 2007

Any milestone is a great opportunity to take some stock and derive conclusions. The start of the Gregorian calendar year is one such milestone moment. Here is a trend spotting analysis for the year ahead that I have done; and this is applicable particularly to the Indian markets:

1. steady growth of biopharmaceutical market
2. emphasis on NDDS (novel drug delivery systems) development
3. herbal market growth (and of other healthcare systems like homoeopathy, to some extent)
4. market fragmentation will continue
5. expanding healthcare market (the hospital and health resort businesses are increasing rapidly). It is observed that increasing GDP and purchasing power always co-relates with increasing healthcare spend. In fact, in India, ORG has spotted the fact that healthcare spend exceeds that of apparel & entertainment spends. In per capita healthcare spend we are below China, Brazil, Mexico and Russia
6. fast growing medical and dental tourism
7. growth of telemedicine
8. clinical trial related outsourcing businesses will continue to grow at a clipping rate
9. product patent implementation will challenge the current business plans and models of pharma companies
10. the HIV and anti infective, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, lifestyle, and gastrointestinal markets will grow
11. globalization trend in healthcare, wellness and pharma is hot
12. collaborative R & D and product development efforts will get a fillip
13. there are shortening product lifecycles, brand evergreening strategies will see a lot of emphasis
14. tremendous growth of rural and OTX markets (in fact the chemist universe estimate is 8,50,000! This is an estimate I got when discussing with an acquaintance of mine from CMP Medica, the CIMS and IDR people. A lot of these chemists are in the interiors)
15. spiraling healthcare costs and health insurance biz will see growth
16. increasing costs & risks of drug development and commercialization of pharma products (recollect torcetrapib failure of Pfizer and the Vioxx (rofecoxib) marketing fiasco of Merck)
17. Strengthening trend of corporatization of healthcare (corporate hospitals and chemist retail chains).

Many of these trends are thanks to the tremendous global position India has achieved with its IT related successes. Today Brand India is on a roll. The economy of India is looking up. The “feel good” factor is replaced with a “feel ecstatic’ factor. It is great to call yourself as Indian. Thank God for all this.

Actually, the immeasurable “butterfly effect’ of the IT/ITES/BPO sector is responsible in great measure for the super growth of India. The world is astonished and indulgent with India; the world is floored and may be even “Bangalored”. Lets understand, Infosys – the first company to be listed on NASDAQ; ringing the NASDAQ bell from Mysore remotely (that was the ultimate marketing moment), getting heads of states to visit the campuses – this is awesome for us Indians. In fact, the amount of contribution to Karnataka state done by Mr. Narayanmurthy, Non executive Chairman of Infosys is comparable to only Late legendary Sir M Visverayya. And companies like Wipro, Satyam, TCS, Mindtree …all have done great for India. (I strongly feel Mr. Narayanmurthy should succeed Mr. Abul Kalam Azad as the next President of India).

From the pharma point of view DRL, Strides Arcolab, Sun, Ranbaxy, Cipla etc are going great globally.
It will also be interesting to note how the IT/ITES/BPO/Consulting sector will respond to the market opportunities and trends outlined above. In fact, in today’s Economic Times (2.1.2007) it is reported Accenture will help Dabur in acquiring businesses abroad.

So what do you think of the above list? Do you have any more suggestions?

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2007!

- Sunil S Chiplunkar, Manager – Marketing and Training, Juggat Pharma, Bangalore
www.pharmaceuticalshealthcare.blogspot.com

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