Pharmacy

...says Dr Ashifi    Gogo, CEO, Sproxil Inc. He is Six Sigma Black Belt certified in Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) and Continuous Process Improvement. A PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College and a double-major BA in Mathematics and Physics from Whitman College, he is Dartmouth's first-ever PhD Innovation Fellow. With the expansion of Sproxil in India, he shares his expertise.

 chandreyee Bhaumik                           

Please share Sproxil's business journey. What gives your company an edge over others?

Sproxil's services allow end consumers to verity with a simple free text message that they are not purchasing counterfeit medication. Sproxil's Mobile Product Authentication (MPA) technology capitalizes on technology that already exist and is readily accessible & easily understood by all levels of society- namely cellular phone SMS capabilities and scratch-off lottery-style labels. Our technology enables consumers to buy genuine drugs over spurious ones. Pharma companies pay service fees to Sproxil for the increase in sales of genuine pharma products. Based on the understanding of the commercial value of the market and how the company could meet the industry's needs, we devoted ourselves to in-depth and exhaustive research before incorporating as a US corporation in 2009. It was in 2010 that we achieved our goal to make the solution available to the public. The year 2011 has proven to be significant as well, as we have expanded to India. Besides, developing nations have frequently been fast consumers of technology, though sadly they often have not had much of a voice in designing the technology. Our technology edges out that of our competitors because it gives a chance for the interaction that has long been missing; we enable consumers to send feedback through an efficient platform, which in turn leads to the design of better products.   Customers are not the only ones who benefit.       

What results in counterfeiting? Counterfeiting is a complex global problem. With the increase in drugs purchased over the Internet, a whole new kind of counterfeit product distribution chain is observed. It is unlikely that counterfeiting as a whole will vanish over the next few years, but there is hope. It can be anticipated that some countries will make a conscious decision to get rid of streets of fake pharma products.

Yet, the decision to work on the issue of counterfeiting came from a non-pharma   concept.   The   US consumers are used to seeing stickers on vegetables like tomatoes in organic stores. These are meant to ensure the safety of the vegetables, but it is difficult to say if the labels are authentic. We were encouraged by this domain but realized that there was no real market in the industry so instead turned to the pharma industry. There are non-pharma applications of our technology but in the short term, we remain focused on growing our success in limiting the availability of fake versions of drugs under our service.

Today's pharma industry is looking for more revenue and with the dominant 'patent cliff' many face with blockbuster drugs going off patent, the impetus will be on generic companies to increase manufacturing. The CEOs of these large pharma companies are likely to experience sleepless nights over the potential loss of their high margins from patented drugs. It is important to remember that it is no longer enough to merely create innovative compounds; companies must also sustain that development effort. It would be great if more attention could be paid to making drugs that improve the welfare of several million consumers in key disease areas that fundamentally affect a nation's development-

How are pharma companies tackling counterfeiting?

When a product achieves commercial success, counterfeiters enter the picture and mar the situation. Think of it this way:

 Win + win + win

Consumers+ Government + pharma

(Except the counterfeiters everyone should win)

Traditionally, pharma companies leveraged the limited resources to counter the menace of counterfeiting. Initially, there were ways like nano particles in the ink used to print packages and chemical analysis of the pills that could help identify fakes, but these have limitations and do not fully empower the consumer. Primarily, the success of chemical testing depends on the number of pills sent for testing. It is not a strategy that scales well.

While speaking with a few pharma CEOs in India, it is believed that counterfeiting in India is largely present in rural areas, and not so much in the cities. From our experience in Africa, there may be a more even spread of presence of counterfeiting between cities and rural areas. However, as governments clamp down on counterfeiting, the fake products find their way deeper into rural areas where the long arm of the law may take a while to reach.

Thus, it is recommended that the governments should enhance their enforcement activities in the fight against fakes. By law, there is a significant limit to what form of law enforcement can be carried out without the government's help. Thus, as the private sector invests more into anti-counterfeiting, it would be helpful to see a matching investment by governments into well equipped police and customs officers to identify, arrest and prosecute law breakers.

Tell us about the investments made at Sproxil for technology up gradation.

Like  any other business  entity investments    have    played    a fundamentally important role for our organization. Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture fund addressing poverty in South Asia and East Africa, recently invested  $1.8 million to fuel Sproxil's expansion in India. Prior to this, we received $100,000 from United States Agency for    International    Development (USAID)   in   addition   to   an early-stage grant of $10,000 from Clinton's Foundation. Besides, our clients also contribute a significant amount to our profits.

Since India also faces this global menace, how do you plan to maximize on this opportunity through Sproxil's technology?

We plan to expand cautiously, but preferably to locations wherever there is either heavy manufacturing in pharma industry or chances of heavy counterfeiting. It has a large population, with more than half of them already equipped with cell phones, so there is no need to ask consumers to buy new equipment. In this purview, Africa and India deserve considerable mention. To provide some industry figures, India makes $8.5 billion worth of drugs for export.

On the other side, in a number of African countries up to 70 per cent of drugs are imported from China and India. At a microscopic view, in India, we are looking at the areas of extensive pharma manufacturing like central south (Bengaluru) and western areas (Mumbai). By following traditional trade routes between India and Africa, we are already seeing success. Till date, globally, we have signed up both large MNCs as well as Indian pharma companies who export to Africa.

To ensure the continued success of our technology's adoption, we are looking for brilliant sales people with additional technical acumen so they can explain the technology. At present, we are not looking for R&D staff as a majority of the development work has already been completed.

In spite of the success, we have achieved, challenges are bound to occur, they typically arise out of the complexities of global trade. If we expand too quickly, we risk spreading ourselves too thin and making key mistakes. If we grow slowly, we miss out on the market opportunity and consumers would not have the help they need to avoid fake products. It is a fine balance, and we are walking the line well at this time.