Optel Vision Scales Up Its Global Manufacturing Capability With India Operations

Shaunak J Dave, Asian Market Director, Optel Vision in an interaction with Viveka Roychowdhury, talks about Optel Vision’s focus for the Indian pharma market.

- Viveka Roychowdhury

What has been Optel Vision’s experience in the Indian pharmaceutical sector? Are companies up to date with global norms and trends?

Since last 27 years, Optel Vision has been serving the global pharmaceutical industry with its vision inspection systems and global track and trace solutions for pharma packaging lines. The core business objective is to enhance patient safety, to increase product, packaging line and supply chain integrity and to combat against global counterfeit. Optel Vision had limited number of installations in Asia - Pacific region erstwhile (prior to 2011). For our Founder Group President, Louis Roy, India had always been an attractive market to explore.

India, being a global manufacturing hub for generics (contributing 20 per cent of global generics business) along with a big number of US FDA/MHRA approved plants, double digit industry growth and a large pool of skilled engineers, is our key preferred market in the Asia Pacific region. We believe that the Indian pharma market has a huge potential, which is largely volume-driven, focused on cost competitiveness and backed by ‘make it happen’ attitude of highly skilled people.

Being a North American company, coming to India was a big challenge. The key challenge was to change the perception of Indian customers in terms of affordability, acceptability and meeting India-specific requirements (which are truly global, as India exports to more than 200 countries). Optel Vision adopted an India-specific  business model and created a service network in more than 13 cities which is backed by highly skilled, customer-centric support team. This was the reason for our exponential growth in India.