'Future of pharma industry is India'

Mahendra Mehta, CEO, Parle Global Technologies gives his opinion on the growth prospects of the Indian pharma industry

What was the idea behind merging three companies, namely, Parle Tablet Tools, Parle Tools International and Parle Pharma Machineries into one entity?

The exponential growth of the Indian pharmaceutical companies taking place world over compelled us to consolidate our core competencies. It was also felt that the real source advantages are to be found in the management's ability to consolidate corporate-wide technologies and production skills into competencies, through which individual businesses could adapt quickly to changing circumstances. Thus this combination of specific, inherent, integrated and applied knowledge, skills and attitudes, which were the core competencies, were employed in emerging a new entity with a global perspective.

What are the unique needs of the pharma industry you perceive?

We interact on the regular basis to the leaders of pharma industry. We understand the growth plans that they have. Moreover, the concept of SEZ is going to accelerate the growth of pharma industry in India rapidly. We at Parle have a superior technology to offer to the industry in terms of processing and packaging machineries. The unique needs are best technology, speed of delivery, fast implementation and making the production lines produce the products efficiently. When I look at the portfolio of products and services that we offer, I feel that we are in a position to support the needs of the pharma industry.

What do you think is the role of service support to your customers?

I truly believe that service support is the backbone of business existence. The service model that we follow is on five key dimensions namely tangibles i.e. physical facilities, reliability, which is our ability to perform the prompt services dependably and accurately, responsiveness, i.e. willingness to help customers and provide prompt services, assurance, which I believe is the ability to convey trust and confidence and finally empathy which is our ability to provide care and individualised attention to our customers.

What is the future course Parle is going to embark on?

We are consolidating our strength in domestic market and local manufacturing base. Rather we are thinking of glocalisation of our business which we propose to be a hybrid combination of globalisation and localisation.