In financial services, when we started out, we were flying under the radar. But one fine day, people woke up to see how we had a pan-India retail network. What we at Ranbaxy have been able to do by taking pharma global, I see happening at Religare with financial services.

•Soma Das: Do the recent FDA restrictions pertain only to the manufacturing process or does it also cover the efficacy of your products?

The FDA’s testing and review has led the agency to conclude that there is no reason to question the safety, quality or effectiveness of Ranbaxy’s drugs. FDA has advised the US consumers to continue using medication manufactured by Ranbaxy as there is no evidence of harm being caused to the patients. We will continue to cooperate with the FDA to resolve the issues swiftly.

•Dhiraj Nayyar: Did price control perversely play a role in the internationalisation of the Indian pharma industry, driving it to look to foreign markets because the domestic ones were quite limited?

I think the process patent regime since the seventies has certainly been one of the cornerstones of why the Indian generics industry has evolved. But Indian companies have gone global because of their vision and entrepreneurship rather than because of government policy. Our growth was driven by Dr Singh’s clear and simple vision that if we wanted to be a global player, we couldn’t restrict ourselves to a market that was only one per cent of the global market. That’s what took Ranbaxy outside India. Also, we believe that price control is not the best way to manage the pharma industry in today’s environment. Today, we have more than 20,000 pharma companies in India and there are more than 5,200 competing brands for every single product. Such a competitive and fragmented market doesn’t call for price controls.

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