Nilesh Gupta, managing director of Lupin Limited, has taken over as president of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) for 2015-17. Glenn Saldanha, chairman & managing director of Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Limited, is the new vice president. The IPA, initially formed by eight national companies in November 1999 has now 20 research based national pharmaceutical companies in its fold.

Its current members are Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Sun Pharmaceuticals Industries, Lupin, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, Torrent Pharmaceuticals, Cadila Healthcare, Alkem Laboratories, Alembic, Mylan Labs, Micro Labs, Cadila Pharmaceuticals, Natco Pharma, Cipla, Panacea Biotec, Wockhardt, Intas Pharmaceuticals, Unichem Laboratories, Ipca Laboratories, USV and JB Chemicals& Pharmaceuticals.

Collectively, the IPA members account for almost 85 per cent of the private sector investment in pharmaceutical research and development, contribute 60 per cent of the country’s exports of drugs and pharmaceuticals, service over 40 per cent of the domestic market, and account for 43 per cent of total sales of essential medicines.

The IPA in a short span of 15 years has emerged as a credible alternative capable of caring for all stakeholders in the pharmaceutical industry. It has grasped the emerging scenario and has worked with the government to steer the local industry to new heights and be counted in the world.

The IPA was formed with the objectives of partnering the government in the evolution of a patent regime that will on the one hand meet the TRIPs obligations and on the other serve national interest; engaging the government in constructive dialogue to move to price management from price control regime for the benefit of the consumer; working with the government in progressively upgrading regulatory provisions, procedures and standards to suit the country’s requirements; and assisting the government agencies in carrying out a campaign against spurious drugs which are a menace to the society.

Not only it has worked relentlessly and made significant contribution in these areas, but has also expanded its sphere of activity. It launched a campaign against spurious drugs in 2000 to identify and prosecute manufacturers and distributors of spurious drugs and constituted an Intellectual Property Cell in 2009 to pro-actively challenge secondary patents at the pre-grant stage. Both these have made significant impact on curtailing spurious medicines and ensuring quality of patents. They are up and running. In a yet another initiative, the IPA constituted a Quality Forum (QF) in 2015. The main focus of the QF is to attain quality excellence, and thereby address various regulatory issues faced by the Indian pharmaceutical industry.

Nilesh Gupta is managing director of Lupin Limited. A chemical engineer from the University Department of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, and an MBA from the Wharton School, USA, he is responsible for transforming Lupin's research programmes, strengthening the company’s global manufacturing operations and quality functions and is a key part of the top team formulating and executing the core strategy that has helped Lupin emerge as a global generic and specialty pharmaceutical major.

Glenn Saldanha is chairman & managing director of Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Limited. He holds a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from Mumbai University and an MBA from Leonard Stern School of Business, New York University. Prior to Glenmark, he worked with Eli Lily, USA and PricewaterhouseCoopers, USA.

In 2014 he was conferred with Best CEO: Pharma & Healthcare (mid-sized companies) by Business Today. Also in the same year he was ranked among the ‘Top 50 CEOs in India’ by Entrepreneur Magazine. He was also conferred the ‘Swiss Ambassador’s Award for Exceptional Innovation’ in 2012 by Embassy of Switzerland and was among the Top 30 Youth Icons of India (2012) by The Hindustan Times.