Data and digital is a force to reckon with when it comes to India

In a recent interview, Suneela Thatte, VP and Head - Healthcare R&D for India, Merck KGaA Darmstadt discussed the evolution and strategic significance of the company's Global Capability Center (GCC) in India, established in 2020. She highlighted that while the GCC was initially set up for cost savings in drug development, the focus has shifted to harnessing India's vast talent pool, particularly in the scientific and medical fields, in an interview with Viveka Roychowdhury

- Viveka Roychowdhury

India seems to have become a hub for pharma GCCs. Merck too set up its GCC in India in 2020. Was the strategy any different, given that it started a couple of years later than other pharma GCCs?

We see GCCs coming to India mainly for talent today. In all companies, Merck included, our initial thought process was to take some activities to India that allow us to save some costs as drug development is a very, very costly affair.

With a long gestation period.

Yes, exactly. You have to also account for the fact that you know not all drugs that you develop are going to make it. Essentially, the whole thought process was, let's kind of create this as a saving case whereby we then plough that money back into our R&D and we can then have more shots at the goalpost, with more drugs in development.

But very quickly the organisation realised that it's not just about the savings. There is huge untapped talent here, especially in the scientific and medical field. Therefore, the strategy needs to encompass a more holistic strategy whereby we get the hub to be part of the strategy.

The R&D strategy has to be front and center to the hub and vice versa. We thought that we have to look at it from the point of view of going beyond the traditional "GCC rules."

Therefore we started building more centers of excellence. I would say that this journey happened fairly quickly for us and we realised early on in the game, that if we have to really get disproportionate value out of the hub here, then we have to move very quickly into more technical, more strategic, more decision making rules and we are on that journey.

Have we reached our destination? Not quite. but I think we are moving in the right direction. We have created some centers of excellence already.