Dr DB Anantha Narayana, director, regulatory affairs, Foods & HPC, Unilever Research, Bangalore, India superannuated this month.

He served the company for the last seven years and was  responsible for building the naturals research programme, besides creating strong regulatory affairs group for South Asia. During his reign,  Brook Bond Natural Care Tea, which is a natural extracts of five herbs was  proven clinically to help build immunity if 3 cups were  taken per day.  

In addition, Dr Narayana, a recipient of the Eminent Pharmacist Award 2007  of the Indian Pharmaceutical Association, is an M Pharm from Saugar University (MP), PhD from Delhi University.  He taught pharmacy for 10 years, worked at Ranbaxy Laboratories for over 10 years. He later joined Dabur Research Foundation (DRF) & became its director. He led a team of researchers to develop for launch anti-cancer drugs, ayurvedic drugs, cosmetics, food products, honey and besides other  herbal products. At  Dabur and later at HUL, he helped the  demonstration of the application of “Reverse Pharmacology” approach to develop herbal products with contemporary scientific validations.

He is a member of Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission’s Scientific Committee and is chairman of its Herbs and Herbal Products Committee .In this  effort, notable contributions have been made by the committee  in  introducing 89 monographs for quality of herbs extracts and products in IP 2010 edition, which has received wide recognition.

Besides, he has served on Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia Committee and ASU DTAB & as a Convener of Herbal Cosmetics Committee of BIS, as Convener of a subgroup of Dr Mashelkar Committee. He is an active member of Managing Committee of Ayurvedic Drug Manufacturer’s Association (ADMA).   He has served on IPA, and was Secretary of IPCA, and is very active in the professional field. He is a co-author of six books and inventor of more than 20 patents.

He is an expert member on the scientific panel of the recently formed Food Safety & Standards Authority of India, and contributes positively to the development of regulations of health supplements and functional foods.  He currently represents BIS on the working group of ISO committee on “Naturals and Organic”.

Dr Narayana has been very active as a Managing Trustee of Delhi Pharmaceutical Trust (DPT), a Trust built with several Pharmacy Professionals to work in the area of Community Pharmacy in India.