The Pharma Wonderkid

Seventeen-year-old Arjun Deshpande is on a mission to ensure generic medicines reach India’s masses at affordable rates

- Varsha Meghani

At 17, chubby and pimply, Arjun Deshpande should be struggling to navigate adolescence, girlfriends and Instagram likes. Instead, he’s consumed by India’s decades-old pharma practices. “Generic medicines are marketed as branded medicines in India, so the customer ends up paying more. Such are the gimmicks played by big pharmaceuticals,” he says breathlessly, pulling out two strips of medicines from the pocket of his jeans.

One is Cipcal-500, a brand of calcium tablets marketed by Cipla, and the other is Shelcal, the exact same tablets sold by Torrent Pharma, in different packaging. “You can see for yourself, they are both the same,” says Deshpande holding out the strips in his palms.

The fine print behind the Cipcal-500 strip, for instance, reads that the medicine has been manufactured by Uttarakhand-based Shivalik Remedies and marketed by Cipla. “Cipla isn’t making the drug, it’s just taking a generic, branding it and increasing the cost,” says Deshpande. “People get fooled into buying branded medicines and end up paying more. But medicines are not a luxury. They are a necessity. Everyone should have access to good quality, affordable medicines.”

To solve this, Deshpande founded Generic Aadhar in early 2019. But his ‘aha moment’ came much earlier when he was 14 and on a summer break. He tagged along with his mother, who works at Mumbai-based Concept Pharma, on a series of trips to the US, Dubai, China and Vietnam to visit trade fairs.