THE GENERIC BREAKTHROUGH - Pharmacy to the World

India's pharmaceutical industry has evolved from dependency on foreign firms to global dominance. Driven by generics, biopharma breakthroughs and innovation, it has cemented the country's status as the planet's drug factory

- BY M.G. ARUN

The story of the rise of the Indian phar-maceutical industry may not have garnered as much global attention as India's IT and outsourcing boom, but it's equally fascinating. From being an industry dominated by foreign pharmaceutical companies at the time of Independence in 1947, Indian drug manufacturers have flourished not just to dominate the domestic markets, but to have a major presence in the high-value US and European markets too.

Foreign drug firms protected their proprietary drugs from copycats using patent laws, but with the passing of the Patents Act, 1970, they could no longer patent their drugs in India. What was allowed were process patents—the process of manufacturing a drug using active pharma ingredients—which became a big turning point, enabling domestic firms to make the same products as the multinationals, but through a reverse engineering process. This meant that drugs thus made did not infringe on the patents of their branded counterparts, but at the same time, had similar ingredients that made them as effective.