Adrena Healthcare Private Limited, a sales and marketing pharma company has flagged off its operations from Bangalore with a field force of 40 personnel. It will focus only on marketing of tablets and injectibles for chronic disorders like cardiovascular disorders, diabetes and neuro psychiatry.

The company will only market formulations of novel molecules which are manufactured under contract. To begin with, its range of 25 brands will be marketed in south India Punjab and Kashmir.

The company started operations with angel investor funding after it conducted a market study to demand for products. It was then found that the chronic care segment indicated promising growth prospects, Srinivas K managing director, Adrena Healthcare told Pharmabiz.

In the wake of the liquidity crunch and cost cutting practices being developed by companies, manufacture of pharmaceuticals is now proving to be uneconomical. "Therefore our key strategy is to focus only on marketing and sales," stated S Sudheendra, president, sales and marketing, Adrena Healthcare.

With new molecules and growing number of doctors and patient population, there are plenty of opportunities for the dedicated pharma marketing companies to garner significant share. All that is required is a potential pipeline of drugs and aggressive sales force to target to strike success, he added.

Adrena has implemented a positioning strategy to enter the growing chronic care market which is valued at Rs 8,000 crore and registering 26 per cent Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). It targets specialists in the cardiology, diabetes, and neuro psychiatry sector along with general practitioners. In its early days in the market, it has been able to grab the attention of cardiologists and physicians for its Amlonite range and a few drugs in the neuro psychiatry and diabetic sector. The company is confident to increase its sales team from 40 to 100 by 2009 end and also look at the SAARC country markets.

Currently, it is estimated that India has around six lakh doctors of which the pharma companies have been able to target only 2.5 lakh. This shows the scope for growth and dedicated pharma marketing companies will stand to gain, stated Sudheendra.

A prevailing trend among the large pharma companies like Cipla, Zydus Cadila, Ranbaxy, Torrent is to outsource manufacture of 40 percent of their products. The setting up of the Special Economic Zones and fall in the excise duty have made in-house manufacture of pharmaceuticals no longer a lucrative proposition. Therefore the concept of sales and marketing companies is fast catching up. Presently there are over 50 dedicated pharma marketing companies in the country. Some of the well known names in the country include Mankind (10th largest in terms of sales revenues), Trigenesis Life Sciences and Mova Pharma.