Has pharma R&D lost steam in India?

 It would certainly appear so. As per recent post by Equity Masters, Global pharma players such as Pfizer Inc, GSK Plc, Novartis and the like typically spend around 15% of sales on R&D. But most of this is done in the developed world. India hardly figures as an investment destination for global pharma trials. Why is that? The primary reason for that is the uncertain regulatory environment. India traditionally had been following the process patent law. This allowed many of the domestic companies to perfect the techniques of reverse engineering. And this spawned the launch of cheaper generic drugs in the country. Although the country in 2005 shifted to the product patent law, implementation has been patchy at best. With considerable uncertainty relating to the validity of patents, most MNCs are wa ry of investing huge sums in the country. As far as domestic companies are concerned, the progress on the R&D front has been quite slow. Given that new drug discovery is a high risk, expensive and time consuming process, most of the domestic companies have once again shifted focus on doing R&D for generics medicines. Thus, even though the R&D spend may have increased, the amount towards new drug discovery has not really risen. Indeed, it does appear that unless the patent law in India matches the standards of the developed world, MNCs at least will not put much money into doing research in India.