Navigating Change: Building a Resilient Healthcare Ecosystem

Nagaraj Gowda, our Chairman & MD, was invited to a panel discussion on "Navigating Change: Building a Resilient Healthcare Ecosystem" at Healthcare 360: Business & Beyond, Business Conclave 2025. He frequently participates in these forums to share practical insights and contribute to informed conversations across the healthcare community.

The discussion, moderated by Dr Ashwini Pandhare, focused on how India can strengthen its healthcare systems, improve implementation, and encourage meaningful innovation. Nagaraj Gowda spoke about familiar challenges in our sector: limited R&D investment, incentives that often favor safer replication over original discovery, and the need for policies that support long-term, high-risk development without compromising access.

The conversation highlighted a few realities we keep encountering:

- India’s R&D intensity remains under 1%.

- Major Indian pharma companies invest about 5–10% of turnover in R&D, while global peers typically invest 15–20%.

- Practical standards and sustained R&D are essential, but execution is where most efforts slow down.

The panel also explored how industry, regulators, and payers can collaborate to rebalance these trade-offs, ensuring that patient welfare remains central and innovation remains possible.

To move ahead, the public and private sectors will need to work together and back novel molecules and new approaches that can address genuine unmet needs.

Thanks to Neha Sadhotra (Program Chair, MBA Healthcare Management), Dr Ashwini Pandhare, and fellow panelists @Krishnan V, sundeep bambolkar, Soumen Das, and Saurabh Gupta for facilitating a thoughtful exchange.