Reuters reports that Merck has its sights set on Sun Industries Ltd as a new marketing partner in India. The deal between Sun and MSD Pharmaceuticals (Merck's Indian arm) could be a marketing joint venture or a co-marketing deal.
The deal would be just another example of a Western Big Pharma company linking up with a local Indian company to gain access to India's large and fast growing pharma market. Earlier this year, Bayer struck a similar deal with Cadilla Healthcare.
Deals between international drug competitors and Indian companies are becoming increasingly common as the pharma industry becomes international and the so-called pharmerging markets (inlcuding India) offer greater growth opportunities now than many of the traditional makrets in US, Europe or Japan. India pharma companies are also being acquired - Piramal by Abbott, Ranbaxy by Daiichi Sankyo, Shantha by Sanofi-Aventis, and Dabur by Fresnius Kabi among others.
Posted by Bruce Lehr April 11th 2011.
More on this from today's NYT (April 12th)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704529204576256762930278064.html?mod=rss_Health
Posted by: bigredbruce | 04/12/2011 at 02:23 PM