The Gujarat government is leaving no stones unturned to highlight the strength of its pharma sector to the global investors community in the fourth instalment of the biennial Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit being held from January 11 to 13, 2017.

In recognition to its excellent performance in the past, the state government has decided to showcase pharma as one of the key sectors amongst the 42 other sectors in the state, during the event.
As per the new promotional strategy, the VG summit will host exclusive seminars for the pharma industry on its sidelines. This is a first for the sector, as pharma seminars were always held as pre event seminars than full fledged seminars alongside. This translates into great opportunity for the sector that has always shown exceptional capability to garner attention even with its pre-event seminars.

“What this translates into is a wider platform for the industry and stakeholders from across all the healthcare spectrum to interact and deliberate over common area of interest. We are very excited about this as it shows that our commitment to work towards the sectors growth has been acknowledged and supported by the government,” said Dr H G Koshia commissioner of Gujarat FDCA.

He further informed that Ficci has been selected as the event partner and KPMG as the knowledge partner of FDCA for the seminar.

iNDEXTb which is the marketing arm of the Gujarat government, will be handling all the logistics and other expenses associated with the pharma seminar. It is a single window for the investors both local, FDI's, FIIs to invest in Gujarat and given the responsibility to develop the marketing strategy for the promotion of ‘Brand Gujarat 'as the most investor friendly state.

Expert committee for pharma
Keen to leverage the best from this, the state government for the first time has constituted a 11 member high level committee under the chairmanship of additional chief secretary (ACS), health and family welfare department. The committee is assigned to not only ensure active participation of all the key stakeholders during the event through a well-planned seminar but also promptly address various issue related with organizing the same.

The committee consist of Anil Mukim ACS acting as the chairman of the expert committee. He is assisted by Dr H G Kosher acting as the member secretary; V G Vanzara joint secretary health and family welfare department of health; Sunil Parekh from Zydus Cadila; Kamalesh Udani, Milind Joshi from J B Chemicals; Dushyant Patel and Ketan Naik from Astra Pharmaceuticals; Dr Abhay Muthal from Sun Pharm; Dr Ashish Hajarnish from Torrent Pharma; Dr Virendra Srivastav from Alembic Pharma; Bharat Desai and Viranchi Shah from IDMA Gujarat branch and Arun K Mishra from Abbott acting as members.

Keen to highlight the strengths of the sector and attract a global audience, the government has urged the stake-holders to come forward with suggestions or topics that can be appropriately marketed through this event.

“The government has opened up a global platform for us by showcasing it as one of the key focus sectors under VG 2017. Gujarat has always been an  investor friendly destination for healthcare sector especially, pharma. Thus to leverage the best from this opportunity, we need to build a solid theme that will best highlight our forte,” pointed out Dr Koshia.

Tapping the strengths
In a meeting held recently with the iNDEXTb officials, experts deliberated on finalising the key topics to be discussed during the seminar. It is understood that the committee is already in the last leg of finalising the theme for the seminar, along with relevant topics for discussion, chief guest, list of eminent speakers, number of delegates etc.

The committee is expected to give all their recommendations on the delegates , speakers and other seminar related details to iNDEXTb by the end of August, so that they can initiate the invitation and other requisite process since iNDEXTb is responsible to take the approval from the government on the same. It is understood that even the audio visuals for the event as needed by the state drug controller department will be provided by iDEXTb, if need be.

Top performers
Through the VG summit, pharma sector have been able to attract investors globally leading to signing of 414 MoUs with huge investment into the state. As per government statistics, the project status of the pharma sector ranks amongst the top for actual materialization right from the first VG summit flagged off from 2011 till the VG 2015.

VG 2011 was able to attract investors in the pharma sector from across the globe leading to signing of 80 MoUs from which 41 projects were commissioned- 11 are already under implementation, two are at preliminary stages, while 26 were dropped due to various reasons. Similarly, the second VG summit commenced in 2013 lead to signing of 133 MoUs, of which 60 projects were successfully commissioned, 26 are under implementation and 15 are at preliminary stages while 32 were dropped.

Repeating the success story for pharma, VG 2015 was able to attract 201 projects to India, out of which 94 projects have already been commissioned, 45 projects are under consideration and 55 projects are at their preliminary stage; bringing the total number of dropped projects to mere seven.

Interestingly, 47 per cent of the total projects have been successfully completed while 20 per cent of the projects are under implementation and 17 per cent are at preliminary stage, with only 18 per cent of the total projects being dropped.

“Time and again healthcare sector, especially pharma has proven to be a major attraction for the investors to venture into Gujarat. We are sure that with this pharma centric activities that are dedicated to highlight the strengths and investor friendly policies adopted in the state, there will be a remarkable increase in the interest shown by the investors in the forth coming summit,” Dr Koshia rhapsodised.

VG Global summit was conceptualised by the Prime Minister Modi when he had been the chief minister of Gujarat to attract global investors to the state. It is aimed at bringing together business leaders, investors, corporations, thought leaders, policy and opinion makers from almost all the key sectors together under one roof.