Indian companies growing outside the borders of India

Dow Wolff Cellulosics (DWC) is increasing its investments in India. Philip Pilnik, Global Commercial Director-Pharma Business, DWC shares more details with Arshiya Khan

Dow has recently acquired Wolff to form Dow Wolff Cellulosics. What was the thought process behind this acquisition?

The most important thing was bringing them both together to see that it works well. Wolff is a 150 years old strong Cellulosics company rich in history. Dow is relatively younger at 110 years. Wolff is more suited to the construction market, but the base is essentially technology and engineering capability. Wolff and Dow coming together makes DWC a much stronger player in the market in terms of product, performance, capacity and capability.

What are DWC's offerings to the pharmaceutical industry?

The new division we have is like a separate company. DWC is a combination of water soluble polymer Cellulosics business of Dow and Wolf Walsrode of Germany, which Dow acquired last year. By this acquisition, Dow brought together synergies from both businesses and created a pharma excipient - the Cellulosics brand. This brand encompasses Methocel, Ethocel and Polyox from erstwhile Dow as well as other popular cellulose products like HEC and CMC. We now have a business unit essentially driven by Cellulosics and offers a combination of excipients for the pharmaceutical industry.

What is the core competency of Dow Wolff Cellulosics?

The key competency is the number of years DWC has been in the industry. Cellulose or cellulose ethers has been around for more than sixty years. And these products have evolved to the level of quality performance that is required. We have a long history from the manufacturing and technical point of view. When people talk about HPMC or hypromellose and ethyl cellulose, the brands Methocel and Ethocel come up first because these are well known, well established, well regarded as safe.

How has DWC positioned itself in the Indian pharma industry?

DWC has positioned itself with its work. With more resources involved, there is a deep focus on India beyond just core activity. There is a big drive from the bigger Dow Chemical company, and DWC fits into that. There is tremendous investment going on across different functions. DWC is coming in to understand and focus on the growth of the pharma market in India, which in a way goes beyond India. We see Indian companies growing outside the borders of India. What we are trying to do is to work with Indian companies outside India as well. Specifically in India what is being done is that we are building more support to achieve that. Today we have a bigger team in India than elsewhere in the world. Our clients includes top Indian companies like the Ranbaxy, Dr Reddy's Laboratories, Cipla, Glenmark etc, are companies that have a significant presence outside of India as well.

How has technology developed at DWC?

When we look at trends in the market place and what opportunities we have, it makes more sense for us to innovate and offer new technologies as per needs of the industry. For example, in the pharma industry, controlled release of drugs or managing the life cycle of a drug are new trends. We look at developing new technologies to do that. Using different technologies, whether it is Hot Melt extrusion, or whether it is Foam type of process technologies, we align our work to really meet the needs of customers.

In the specific example of granulation technology, we are very closely looking at the granulation process and how we can improve and come up with innovative ways of employing technology that could be used in the pharma market to be able to enable either improved economics or improved products.

What is the business model that you follow?

We work with our customers to understand the best way DWC can align itself to suit customers in the industry, and how well our customers gain from the technology. We also look at the nature of the customer and the market as well. So there is no single answer to that. We can also adopt a totally new model depending on customer needs and our capability. The breadth of technologies that we have been working with, have led to the breadth of different models. Licensing is certainly a primary component but it is not an exclusive component to any model.

How would you categorise these technologies?

What we have is various enabling technologies. For example, foam granulation helps companies who have specific needs in the granulation process in their manufacturing units. So in certain situations like in the case of Bristol Mayer Squib, they used our technology that has enabled them to resolve some of their challenges. These are much more enabling technologies that bring solutions to customer problems. We have enabling technologies that help different customers resolve their problems. And from that perspective, yes, the use of our Cellulosics does play an important role as the technologies are built on our strong knowledge of polymer chemistry.

Can you quantify the investments made in India?

Dow has invested $ 100 million to set up a R&D Center at Pune. The facility is a good example of something we are doing that is a part of a bigger activity. We have Subject Matter Experts (SME's) based across the world. We have people in Midland, New Jersey, Netherland and other regions as well. All this forms a part of our technical organisation from which we are able to leverage experience and expertise to work with customers and serve them better.

Pharma industry in India is on the growth track. What is DWC's strategy to address these growth needs?

The most important thing is in understanding where the gaps are. As we go forward, the industry has gaps and being able to identify those gaps, what those needs are is a challenge. And within those challenges lie the solution based on knowledge and products that DWC has. So understanding the gaps and coming up with solutions is the way to help our customers. The solutions could be products, granulation enabling technology or the extrusion process. Understanding the gaps today and looking into the future is what we need to pay attention to.

Have you recognised any gaps till now?

There are millions of them! And the biggest one is drug solubilisation. The fact is that the industry has been talking about this for long and the need drives companies like us to come up with solutions whether it is a product or other formulation solution with our customers. This is where Hot melt Extrusion plays a very important role. It enables and aids solubilisation and at the same time helps achieve a specific release profile. There are many gaps where DWC continues to strive to identify and bridge them.

What are your future plans for the Indian pharma industry?

The investment we are making is the primary driver of our future plans for India. As the market and the demand grows, we will be investing more resources in India. However, Indian companies are not just going to stay in India alone. Companies like Ranbaxy have got a world class global R&D centre in New Delhi. We will continue to work with such companies who have also established and plan to establish global footprints. We will do out little bit in every way. In India specifically we will put more resources as required. The benefit could be that we know that this may not stay in India but could go elsewhere in the world and we will still be there.

arshiya.khan@expressindia.com