After several years, Indian Drug Manufacturers' Association has broken the tradition of inviting the Union minister for chemicals and fertilizers as the chief guest for its annual general meeting this time. The decision of IDMA president to invite the eminent scientist and director general of CSIR, Dr Mashelkar as the chief guest for the AGM made a lot of sense. At least he could give an inspiring speech to the members of the pharmaceutical industry unlike the ministers who just read out a prepared text. Dr Mashelkar's advice to the Indian pharmaceutical industry is indeed significant. He told the audience that if Indian drug industry has to survive in the post-2005 era, it has to be innovative and not imitative. Under the protection of Indian Patent Act, 1970 the domestic pharma industry has been thriving on process research for the last 30 years. He wanted this to stop at least now. It is not that leaders in domestic pharma industry are unaware of this need to change. But most of them are unwilling to get into basic research as it involves huge investments with no immediate return. Probably Dr Mashelkar wanted to reiterate the need for basic research in the context of the desperate attempts by the Indian drug industry to dilute the new product patent regime, which India is under obligation to accept under TRIPS. It is no secret that new molecular research is extremely expensive and very few Indian drug companies have the resources and willingness to do it. Of course, some of the top Indian drug companies like Ranbaxy, Dr Reddy's, Torrent and Wockhardt, members of Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance, have commenced basic research programme for some years now. There are still a number of fast growing formulation and bulk drug companies that are yet to get into serious drug research. Maybe this continuing hesitation of pharma companies to invest in R&D has provoked Dr Mashelkar to talk on innovative research. Another significant point raised by Dr Mashelkar is about the need for focussed research by the domestic pharma companies. He was right in saying that if India has to be self reliant in medicines, the domestic drug companies have to focus on research for drugs required for major diseases affecting the poor like malaria, TB, leprosy and AIDS. No new drugs have come out of laboratories of MNCs for these diseases for the last several years. Drugs for these diseases are in huge demand not only in India but in all the poor and developing countries. Indian pharma companies, therefore, have a tremendous business opportunity in developing new drugs in these therapeutic categories. Unfortunately, that focus of research for new molecules is lacking even amongst the few research based Indian companies.