'We act as an extended R&D arm in film coating'

Never judge a pill by its colour, but unfortunately patients tend to do just that. If only tablets looked good, patients would actually feel like having their medicine. INSTACOAT SMART, a new film coating system being launched at CPhI India promises to make pills with a pearl-like glow. Suresh Pareek, Managing Director, Ideal Cures gives more details to Express Pharma

Suresh Pareek, Managing Director, Ideal Cures

Could you give us a brief background of Ideal Cures?

Ideal Cures is a company of 30 plus years standing in the pharma industry and has metamorphosed into a speciality company focused on highly specialised field of film coating systems for almost a decade. We have state-of-art facilities located near Mumbai and Jammu in India. Ideal Cures develops, manufactures and supplies INSTACOAT ready mix film coating systems for solid oral dosage forms for normal film coating, functional coating and speciality products for the pharma, nutraceuticals, veterinary, herbal, ayurvedic and Chinese medicine industry. As far as India is concerned, we are the only company which has two manufacturing locations, the production capacity of which I believe would be the highest compared to any of our competitors.

What are the new products/ technologies scheduled to be launched at CPhI India/P-Mec India?

We are introducing INSTACOAT SMART, a pearlescent based film coating system which offers the following advantages—creation of unique brand identification, improving existing brand image, strengthening the brand in the market place, improvement in better patient compliance, and help in reducing counterfeiting.

It will add value to the new lifestyle drugs/nutraceutical products being launched every day. It is a very user friendly and is in line with the company's philosophy "tablet coating technology simplified". It can be used with organic solvents, hydro-alcoholic solvents or with aqueous system and can be used in all kinds of coating machines, be it conventional coating machines or autocoaters.

INSTACOAT SMART is being launched in two versions—Instacoat Smart film coating system, which is directly applied on core tablets, and Instacoat Smart SE, a system which is applied on film coated tablets.

What according to you is Ideal Cures' value addition/market positioning vis a vis competitors?

Ideal Cures' mission is to add value to the customers' products, which means that we act as an extended R&D arm relating to film coating for the customer.

Once the customer demands are understood, the sample of the required product is developed and services offered for the development of film coating either at our application lab or at customer's R&D. For us good quality means meeting customer's demands and expectations.

What services/products does Ideal Cures provide within Asia-Pacific?

Ideal Cures provides the entire range of products within the Asia-Pacific region and offers technical services pre-shipment and post-shipment to its customers and has network distribution arrangement in 15 countries in Asia-Pacific.

How regulated is the Indian colourants market as compared to a more developed market like say the USA?

Colorants fall into four broad categories—water soluble colours, lake colours, iron oxides and natural colours.

In film coating for pharma industry, it is mostly lake colourants which are used. Water soluble colours are mainly used in sugar coating, as well as liquid suspensions/syrups.

The regulatory authority of each country has their own list of permitted colorants. We at Ideal Cures provide complete regulatory support for the colourants, as well as other raw materials used in film coating.

In order to ensure that our formulation keeps pace with industry trends, we follow the guidelines and regulations issued by most of the countries including, but not limited to the United States Pharmacopoeia (US), European Pharmacopoeia (Ph Eur), the Japanese Pharmacopoeia (JP), Japanese Pharmaceutical Excipients (JPE), Food Chemicals Codex (FCC), Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Indian Pharmacopoeia (IP), British Pharmacopoeia (BP), Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and the EC directives. Other international regulations and detailed information are also addressed when needed. Excipients are selected based on the regulatory requirement needed for the intended applications.

Indian colourant market is fairly regulated as compared to the rest of the world. However, if we compare specific products with USA then certain products like iron oxide have quantity restrictions in uses per day. Similarly, certain colourants which are permitted in India are not permitted in USA like Lake Carmoisine (E122), Lake Curcumin (E100). Lake Ponceau-4R (E124) is allowed in India and Europe, but not allowed in USA. Further there are certain colourants like Lake Allura Red (E129) which is permitted in USA but not in India. Another example is of Lake Amaranth (E123) which is not permitted in India and USA but allowed in existing formulations in Europe.

What do you envisage will be the growth rate of this segment of the Asia-Pacific/Indian market in the next five years? What will be your strategy to achieve this?

The growth of the film coating system depends on three factors—the growth of the pharma market, the shift of customers from home-brew to ready-to-use film coating material like Instacoat and new applications and usages. There is also good growth expected in the neutraceutical market which is yet to fully evolve in the Asia-Pacific region.

It is therefore very difficult to project the exact growth rate because of not exactly knowing how many customers will launch new film coating products, how many existing uncoated products will get shifted to film coating as well as the shift from home-brew to ready-to-use coating material like INSTACOAT.

We envisage good growth rate by providing technical services to consumers for shifting from organic to aqueous base in home-brew segment as well as offering competitive prices and better delivery schedules. At the same time, we will continue our support by offering new products and technologies to our customers in the pharma and neutraceutical industry by continuously doing research.

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