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Counterfeiting rampant in pharma with lack of authentication before purchase: Vipin Choudhary
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Nandita Vijay, Bengaluru
October 29 , 2021
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Lack of a solution to authenticate a brand before purchase and the absence of a single platform to authenticate products from different brands has led to rampant counterfeiting in pharma, said Vipin Choudhary, founder & CEO, Pucho.in.
No pharma company in the world wants counterfeit medicines and no consumer wants to purchase it too. Counterfeit medicines could cause irreparable long term damage to health. From a company perspective, counterfeits result in revenue loss and reputation at stake losing customers’ trust, he added.
Bengaluru-based Pucho.in is working to eliminate counterfeit and has a multi-lingual horizontal mobile application anti-counterfeit solution to protect the interest of consumers, pharma companies and medical devices too.
Quoting the United States Trade Representative (USTR) he stated, “20 per cent of all pharmaceutical goods sold in the Indian market are counterfeit. India is world’s leading producer of fake drugs, according to research by the OECD and the EU Intellectual Property Office.”
India’s pharmaceutical and medical device domestic market is US$ 52 billion. Counterfeit medicines and medical devices estimated to be over US$ 10.4 billion was sold in India in 2020. Counterfeiting is growing at an average of 20% year-on-year. Counterfeit medicines kill more people than malaria and war put together every year. The counterfeit numbers and the cascading effect it has on health and lives of people is scary, noted Choudhary.
It is critical to empower the consumer to authenticate before purchase so that they can keep safe from counterfeit medicines. It is equally critical that pharma companies regain the revenue presently being lost to counterfeiters. By empowering the consumer to authenticate before purchase, the counterfeit product will not be sold and will be rejected over the counter. This way we can put an end to the vicious cycle of counterfeiting by engaging the brand owner and the consumer, said Pucho.in chief.
We will engage with the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) at an opportune time. We are in discussion with various pharma and medical devices companies and related industry associations, giving product demos. The response is encouraging because it will help pharma companies prevent revenue loss due to counterfeiters. By the year end, we intend to have this solution implemented on all critical drugs including those in the Covid treatment protocol, said Choudhary.
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