Addressing the media at a roundtable this morning, Vani Manja, Managing Director, Boehringer Ingelheim India said, “Boehringer Ingelheim India aspires to be amongst the top five multinational pharmaceutical companies in India over the next few years. We have been enabling access to our innovator products to patients across India and the neighbouring markets in the diabetes, cardiovascular, stroke and respiratory diseases segments. Our plan in these therapy areas is to build sustainable partnerships to ensure an ecosystem of access and care for patients. We have initiated action in that direction.”

Medical Reps will Remain – What will be their Future Role?

There was a phase when the industry feared that digital would eventually replace the medical sales representative but it appears that digital engagements work best when facilitated by an affable and knowledgeable person, who can personalize the information, and the conversation, to the doctor. In pharma, there’s no substituting face-to-face dialogue it seems. And why should it? “Rather than digital replacing a person in pharma, the need of the hour is digitalizing the approach of person. The person and the technology are HERE TO STAY”, says Archis Joshi, Commercial Head at Dr. Reddy’s. The sales role is getting tougher. Medical information, at one point pharma’s greatest value, is today much more freely available than it used to be. In the Indian market which is dominated by generic medicines lacking differentiation, simply informing doctors about the product, isn’t a viable prospect any more when it comes to piquing their interest. “Why are brands that have been around for some time still unable to cross the marketing funnel and are still stuck at either the ‘awareness’ or the ‘interest’ stages, and unable to move towards the ‘purchase’ or ‘recommendation’ stages?” wonders Mehul Shukla, Director, Marketing Excellence at Cipla.