After American MNC pharma companies like Merck and BMS giving positive signs of setting up India operations, it is the turn of the Japanese now. Daiichi Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd, the seventh largest Japanese pharmaceutical company with an annual global turnover of more than 323 billion Japanese yen is planning to set up its Indian subsidiary.

According to senior officials in Daiichi, the company's initial plans will be to set up a marketing subsidiary in cities like Mumbai or Bangalore.

"Daiichi will initially set up a marketing office in the country, which would market the company's innovative pharmaceutical products in India. We are also looking for partners in contract research in India. In future, when the IPR regime is fully implemented in the country, we may look India as a manufacturing hub for our key anti-cancer and anti-infective products," said Dr. Osamu Sato, manager, Research Administration Group R&D Operations Dept, Daiichi, Pharma Co, Japan. As of now India is a new market for the Japanese company, he added.

Currently, besides Japan, Daiichi has operations in US (Daiichi Pharma Corp, Daiichi Medical Research), China (manufacturing hub) and UK (Daiichi Pharma UK). The company is the seventh largest pharma company by sales in Japan, with sales of 246 billion Japanese yen, the top three being (Takeda 517 bn yen), Yamanouchi (352.8 bn yen) and Sankyo (315.6 bn yen) for the year ended March 2003.

Daiichi is a major manufacturer of anti-infectives, CVS and Thrombosis products. The company does research in areas like asthma, diabetes, and Alzheimer diseases. For the year ended March 2003, the company had spent about 59 billion yen on R&D, said Dr. Osamu Sato.