Ronojoy Banerjee

New Delhi

Rising costs and aging population in the West is making India a

RELATED ARTICLES RIM launches BlackBerry Curve 9320 in India India a safe investment destination:Moily Goldman Sachs, BofA-ML cut India GDP forecast Toyota denies plan for $6,000 cars in India India Q4 GDP seen slowing to 6 per cent: StanChart

preferred destination for clinical research services (CRS), a report said. The domestic market is witnessing an exponential growth in CRS, which is two-and-a-half times more than the overall market growth globally, a paper by Ficci-Ernst & Young (E&Y) said. At present, India participates in 7 per cent of global Phase III trials and about 3 per cent in Phase II trials. “Industry-sponsored trials have grown at 39 per cent CAGR between 2004 and 2008,” the paper said.

The report highlights that in the past 15 months, industry sponsored Phase II and Phase III sites have grown at 116 per cent and India ranks third as far as attractiveness to clinical trials are concerned, after the US and China.

“The most active 25 pharmaceutical companies worldwide, based on the number of study sites registered, are also active sponsors of clinical studies in the country,” the release issued by Ficci said.

SK Mukherjee, vice-president, operations of CliniRx, a company that conducts clinical research for leading pharmaceutical firms, told Financial Chronicle that his company was doing practically all trials in India now. “The West’s aging population makes it an unviable option for clinical research,” he said. Mukherjee added that India offered global pharmaceutical companies a wide genetic pool, comprising different kinds of people across various states in India under one roof. “Usually companies have to resort to conducting trials across say 20 countries, now they can only do it in India,” he said.

Cost effectiveness is also a big factor, given the present economic downturn. “If we take the US as a benchmark then clinical trials in India can cost anywhere between 25 per cent to 50 per cent less,” said Surinder Kher, senior vice-president, Vanthys Pharmaceutical Development and chairman Ficci Clinical Research Task Force. However, Mukherjee added that despite the advantage, US still constitutes more than 60 per cent of global clinical research services.

Though China poses a threat to India for attracting CRS from global pharmaceutical giants (ranked 2), industry experts say that the fears are unwarranted. “The language can be a big problem for Chinese. This is where India scores. Also, most hospitals in China are controlled by the government. This brings in a lot of unnecessary administrative delays,” Vasudeo Ginde, president and managing director of clinical trials management company Diagnosearch said.

At present, the Indian drug market is the third largest globally (by volume) and is expected to reach $20 billion by 2015. About 25 per cent of the domestic pharmaceutical market comprises MNC players, but it is estimated that by 2015 the share would increase by 10 percentage points to 35 per cent.