My Pharma Reviews

Indian pharma has spent time, money and effort trying to reach more doctors, add more field force and expand distribution. But once that is done, a more consequential part of the deal remains unacknowledged and unowned. Hence today I asked my guest who owns the customer relationship after the prescription is written?

The answer has implications for commercial productivity, channel economics and more importantly, how pharma companies allocate (or leave) capital between building capabilities and accessing them through partners.

This conversation examines why the last mile is not merely a distribution problem. It is a strategic question about control, data and value creation. My guest says that for pharma CXOs, the challenge is not simply to reach more towns. It is to make every incremental rupee of commercial investment work harder and asks if pharma thinks about building reach or building a more valuable business?

Listen in to one of the most comprehensive understanding of the pharma supply chain.

This is my conversation with Mr. Rajasekhar Parcha, founder and CEO of GoApptiv.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mypharmareviews.substack.com

Which Indian pharma company is growing the fastest?

Wrong question. The right one is, which company is making its next rupee of revenue more valuable than its last, and can prove it’s still true a year from now?

Some companies are building revenue. Some are converting revenue into EBITDA. A few are rebuilding the economic architecture of the business entirely. And at least one, this year, looked like it was doing the third thing and was actually just riding a fading product out the door.

Revenue is the headline. EBITDA is the signal. Earnings architecture is the strategy. And telling the three apart, quarter by quarter, is the entire job.

Look at this chart. And listen to the new episode.

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Everything else “strategic” like semi-conductor chips, rare earth minerals, cloud computing etc., is de-risking away from China while biopharma is de-risking into it.

The US-China biotech deal value went from $5B in 2020 to $136B last year. Chinese companies originated 46 of 104 new active substances approved globally in 2025 - more than the US and Europe combined. And three days ago, China made the ambition official by releasing a state plan targeting 25% of the world’s first-in-class drugs by 2030.

Meanwhile, Pfizer’s own strategic adviser ranks China a “distant third” threat, behind the IRA and MFN pricing. Maybe true for Pfizer’s margin but an odd way to describe a country that just legislated a 25% target.

For Indian pharma, the usual “if the world is de-risking from China, we benefit” is only half right. We’re gaining ground in manufacturing and CDMO. We’re absent from the race that actually compounds - who originates the medicine in the first place.

New episode of My Pharma Reviews — The Podcast is out. Listen in!

Meanwhile, here is the paper I referenced on the show.

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Two PE firms with two different playbooks are building, what is probably, the next generation of Indian pharma platforms.

In the final episode of my conversation with Anil Fernandes, we step back from individual acquisitions and look at the bigger picture.

Warburg Pincus is building a platform from the ground up assembling specialist businesses under new leadership. ChrysCapital is taking a different route using control of an existing listed pharma company and adding assets around it.

We discuss what separates the two approaches, the risks embedded in each, and most importantly, what evidence would tell us 12 months from now that a platform is actually working rather than simply getting bigger. Also, does the platform stop after two or three acquisitions or does successful consolidation create the logic for the next acquisition?

We close with a question for every Indian pharma professional - if private equity is beginning to think about pharma as a portfolio of platforms rather than a collection of companies, should pharma leaders be thinking differently too?

Episode 6 is now live - listen in!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mypharmareviews.substack.com

Private equity is assembling pharma platforms one sub-scale asset at a time. Why haven’t Indian pharma promoters done the same? That is the starting point for Episode 5 of My Pharma Reviews – The Podcast with Anil Fernandes.

India has seen plenty of large pharma acquisitions. But this time, the game seems different - acquire smaller, specialist businesses, combine them, build institutional capabilities around them and create something larger than the sum of its parts.

So why hasn’t this become a more common promoter strategy? Is it about capital? Risk appetite? Promoter control? The difficulty of integrating businesses? Or simply a different way of thinking about where value is created?

And then comes the more interesting question.

If Warburg’s reported interest in Universal NutriScience takes the platform into nutraceuticals, are we still looking at the same pharma-platform thesis or is the definition of the platform itself changing? When does a pharma platform stop being a collection of pharma companies and become a broader healthcare platform?

Episode 5 is on. Listen in!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mypharmareviews.substack.com

Buying the companies to make the platform may be the easy part, making them work together is where the real platform thesis gets tested. In Episode 4 of My Pharma Reviews – The Podcast, Anil Fernandes and I move from the economics of pharma consolidation to its most difficult variable - people.

What happens when businesses built by different promoter families, with different cultures, leadership styles and ways of operating, suddenly have to function as one platform?

We also explore what the CEO’s priorities should look like across the first 6 months, the first year and the first 3 years because integration isn’t simply about combining businesses. It is about creating an organisation capable of making better decisions than the individual companies could make on their own. The sum should be greater than its parts.

Can you consolidate assets without destroying the entrepreneurial capabilities that made those assets worth buying in the first place?

Episode 4 is on, listen in!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mypharmareviews.substack.com

When does a collection of small pharma businesses actually become a platform?

We often hear about the promise of consolidation - greater scale, stronger bargaining power, wider reach. But the difficult question is what happens after the acquisitions are done.

In Episode 3 of My Pharma Reviews — The Podcast, I continue my conversation with Anil Fernandes and explore two deceptively simple questions.

* Is there a minimum viable scale for a pharma platform? And once you cross that threshold, what actually changes on Day One?

* Is it the salesforce? Procurement? Supply chain? R&D? Distribution? Or is the real transformation in how capital, brands and commercial capabilities are deployed across the portfolio?

For Indian pharma CXOs and investors, buying scale is easy, but converting scale into superior economics is the real test.

Episode 3 is on. Listen in!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mypharmareviews.substack.com

Episode 2 is a practical conversation. We spend a lot of time discussing the deals after they’re announced like Integrace, Koye Pharma, Linux Laboratories, Novartis India, Minipress XL. But investors rarely make outsized returns after private equity has already arrived.

So I asked Anil Fernandes a different question.

How do you identify a pharma company that is platform-buildable before Warburg Pincus or ChrysCapital comes knocking?

We unpack the screening checklist PE firms may actually use like brand quality, prescriber stickiness, salesforce density, therapeutic adjacencies, EBITDA quality, promoter mindset and acquisition readiness. We also discuss the difference between a company that’s a genuine platform and one that’s merely a bolt-on acquisition.

If you’re a pharma CXO, investor, founder or analyst, this episode about finding tomorrow’s platform before the market prices it in.

Episode 2 of My Pharma Reviews – The Podcast. Listen in!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mypharmareviews.substack.com

A new chapter for My Pharma Reviews

After years of writing and conversations around Indian pharma, I’m excited to announce the next chapter of My Pharma Reviews - The Podcast. The idea is to move beyond the headlines and have deeper conversations with people who have actually built, led, invested in and shaped the pharmaceutical industry. We’ll explore the strategic shifts, business models, capital flows and uncomfortable questions that are likely to shape the next decade of Indian healthcare.

And I couldn’t have asked for a more interesting subject or a better first guest, to begin with. My first conversation is with Mr. Anil Fernandes, and we explore a fascinating development unfolding in Indian pharma. Private equity appears to be moving from investing in pharmaceutical companies to building pharmaceutical platforms by stitching together multiple sub-scale businesses. Warburg Pincus and Integrace/Koye on one side. ChrysCapital, Novartis India, Linux and other emerging pieces on the other.

Anil helps me understand if this the beginning of a new model for creating value in Indian pharma and if individually small branded businesses become significantly more valuable when assembled into a larger therapeutic platform? Where do the real synergies come from and most importantly, where could the model break?

These are not just M&A questions. They could determine how the next generation of Indian pharma companies gets built, funded and eventually owned. As you can imagine, this was a long conversation, hence I am breaking it up into a series that you can take your time to listen to and assimilate.

I’m looking forward to bringing these conversations to you (with Anil and other equally distinguished guests) and hopefully making My Pharma Reviews - The Podcast a space where pharma leaders, investors and everyone interested in healthcare can think beyond the day’s headlines.

Here is the first episode - I hope you like it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mypharmareviews.substack.com

Look at this chart from Google Finance: US +42.7%. India -3.8%. Two years, same global instability. This isn’t “America is superior.” Markets don’t price GDP, they price earnings acceleration. US tech/AI earnings converted capex into real revenue, against a falling discount rate. India’s earnings cycle stalled while carrying a valuation premium built for perfection. The correction wasn’t a verdict on India’s economy. It was a repricing of an overpriced starting line.

Pharma is already answering the “can it help” question — in relative terms. Nifty Pharma: +17.7% YTD. Nifty 50: -6.9%. A genuine divergence.

But do the arithmetic before you get excited. Pharma + healthcare carry roughly 4-5% weight in the Nifty 50. Even a spectacular sector run moves the headline index by low single digits. Pharma can stabilise. It cannot single-handedly lift. Pharma re-rates the sector before it re-rates the index. The gap between those two closes only if Indian companies start owning IP, not just capacity.

We need scale, but IP driven scale, not just capacity driven one.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mypharmareviews.substack.com