Pharma Mark

ED Cell PCP
3 min readNov 20, 2020

An insight into pharma marketing.

By Madhav Gandhi

Pharma Mark ft. Mr. Subba Rao Chaganti

Competition cuts, but collaboration adds.

Keeping the above thought in mind, the team of the Entrepreneurship Development Cell, of Poona College of Pharmacy (BVDU, Pune) did a collaborative effort with the IPASF (Indian Pharmaceutical Association- Student’s Forum) Pune branch, an amazing forum that has been delivering out-of-the-box sessions and webinars in the field of Pharma.

Belonging to a pharmacy college, our team had a long-awaited wish to organize an event covering pharma-oriented entrepreneurial niches. This eventually lead to the collaboration between ED Cell and IPASF-Pune Branch empowering both teams to explore our common grounds.

Pharma Mark held on the 30th of August, 2020 combined the realms of pharmacy and marketing knowledge, as we invited an established pharma marketing professional Mr. Subba Rao Chaganti, to help us learn about Pharma Marketing. He is an executive coach, teacher, and independent Pharma Marketing professional and has authored 6 books on Pharma Marketing.

The session started off with the Subba Sir sharing some valuable job opportunities in the technical and marketing field of the pharmaceutical sector. He also discussed the roles of product manager and medical sales liaison. Moving on to the main highlights of the session he helped the students to understand some key aspects of the Indian Pharmaceutical Marketing Sector, which are:

  • Positioning of the product in a manner that differs from the consumer’s outlook when compared with other brands.
  • The anticipation of the product cycle must be done before its availability.
  • India is a market of unethical marketing practices with the involvement of health physicians, but the crisis has changed the scenario.

Every crisis exists to create a change and when adopted and improved upon, you’re the fittest to survive.

  • Generic Market has a lot to reinvent and create.
  • Communication skills are the key skills to master.
  • Remote engagement of customers should be the aim of local pharmaceutical industries to witness a growing graph.

Having seen the market for decades now, Subba Sir shared his experience on what skills need to be developed to pursue this profession, which included:

  • Communication skills,
  • Risk anticipation,
  • Digital and tech savvyness,
  • Analytical skills.

He ended the session by sharing some conventional yet effective marketing strategy examples from Dr. Reddy’s and Sun Pharma, like rebranding strategy and closed-loop marketing.

“Marketing isn’t the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you create, it’s about creating genuine customer value.” — Phillip Kotler

We would like to acknowledge Mr. Subba Rao Chaganti for such a great experience and we are also thankful to our audience for being active all the time. The session was attended by over 200+ students across Maharashtra. At last, we would like to thank all officials, teachers, staff, members, the team of IPASF Pune Branch for making this session possible.

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