The Right Spice | India Pharmaceutical Market Entry Strategy for Multinational Companies

Poised on the cusp of an exciting period of growth, the Indian pharmaceutical market is big and getting bigger, driven by growing prosperity, a shift in disease patterns and governmental reforms that are unlocking new opportunities for multinational companies (MNCs). But this growth also has been accompanied by uncertainty around the future of the regulatory environment, disease trends, prescription patterns, domestic research and development capability, health care spending, health insurance and distribution infrastructure.

So, what will the future hold for pharmaceuticals in India and how should MNCs approach the Indian pharmaceutical market?

Each of these questions portends a different future for the Indian pharmaceutical market and a different opportunity for MNCs, yet these questions don't have clear answers. How can MNCs build a strategy without a better idea of which predictions will prove to be correct? If you bet on the wrong assumptions, you could risk catastrophe. If you wait until the answers are known, it might be too late. The uncertainty could paralyze a company or lead it to develop a compromise strategy that won’t expose it to ruin but won’t achieve breakthrough results, either. The challenge is not to look for a superior prediction of the future because it doesn’t exist. The challenge is to manage the strategic risks embedded in these questions.

In the article attached below, learn how the use of Strategic Flexibility – the combination of scenario planning with real options to provide a framework for identifying uncertainties and developing the options needed – may help MNCs contemplating entry into or expansion in India reduce the unknown to a manageable number of outcomes. Also learn how the Strategic Flexibility Framework could be applied to four plausible scenarios for the Indian pharmaceutical market in 2015.

Download the article and the PowerPoint presentation that was delivered at BIO2008, attached below.