Established in 1963, Samarth is an innovative Life Sciences company that researches, develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of life saving critical care drugs. With the vision of emerging as a ‘Premier Health Care Company’, it stands by the value of providing the medical fraternity with products of highest standards. Achieving this level of excellence is owing to the team’s ability to listen to the stakeholders and understand their unmet, critical and advanced needs in focused therapeutic segments and orphan drugs. While keeping quality at forefront, Samarth stands out as a unique healthcare company since they believe in the welfare of patients by offering quality medicines that can be afforded by one and all.
Journey of Samarth
This journey for Samarth has been very satisfying in their endeavour of ‘adding life to life’ and extending their portfolio from niche, unique, and exclusive offerings to a complete portfolio in focused specialties. Over the years, they have evolved with an increasingly focused approach in defined therapeutic areas. Samarth currently operates in the Therapeutic Areas of (i) Critical Care, (ii) Anaesthesia, (iii) Gastroenterology, (iv) Oncology, (v) Ophthalmology, (vi) Urology, (vii) IVF and Gynaecology, and (viii) Animal Healthcare. It has a strong presence of over 1000+ field force on the ground for engagement with the patients and thereby offering quality products to them.
They have a wide spectrum of business operations comprising of multiple therapy specialties, corporate hospitals and have also diversified into Animal Health Business. The team is compelled to drive varied approaches for developing and delivering differentiated products to patients and thereby enhancing the brand connect. In corporate hospitals, the working approach is devised through key account business addressing the hospital at multiple levels like Doctor, Administration, Purchase Manager and the Board of the hospitals. The team working in that segment is specialized in working at multiple touchpoints and engaging stakeholders through activities like Continuous Medical Education, Round Table Meetings, and paramedical staff training.
In the therapy focused business, they are engaging the KOLs for therapy-based solutions and also building a sustainable relationship with Doctors by 1:1 personal visit. To add to this, Samarth believes in creating moments of truth with RTM’s, Medical education programs, participation in symposium & seminars. The marketing & sales team plays a critical role in understanding the patient’s unmet needs and thereby generating a seamless process of feedback, which becomes the foundation for developing communication and building the brand plan & strategies. In veterinary field, some of these are associated with hands-on demonstration, which is critical for establishing the brand at the stakeholder level.
To this organization, it’s DNA is the quality of products & services they offer. To further this pursuit, the team conducts timely post-marketing studies to gauge the effectiveness, side effects and clinical performance of the medicines. The journey of transforming from ‘products’ to a ‘brand’ has been exciting owing to the relentless efforts put by the team. Peers in this industry have acknowledged the efforts undertaken in building a promising brand. Caprin, Lobet & Adrenor have been awarded best brands for consecutive 3 years in the ‘Brand of the Year’ category in chronic and sub-chronic segment by AIOCD-AWACS. Samarth gives the credit to its loyal patients & doctors for supporting, guiding, and motivating the team to put their best foot forward in the focused segment.
The enduring trust which Samarth has earned over the long heritage of 58 years is based on deep-rooted values which stem from the five pillars given below:
In-House Manufacturing
85% of products marketed by Samarth are manufactured in-house to offer effective, consistent & high-quality medicines as per the global standards. One of the core values is the ‘timely delivery’ of products which is implemented out of the 4 manufacturing units and more than 3500 supply partners. Samarth is unified to make a difference in the lives of patients through consistent quality and affordable medicines. They are committed to excellence across all areas of operations to maintain the trust of the medical fraternity and patients.
Reliable Quality
With every dose produced and delivered, quality lies at the forefront. This unmatched quality can be derived due to detailed attention towards procuring high-quality raw material & robust manufacturing processes. Samarth ensures quality excellence not only in manufacturing but in the supply chain and employees following it.
Evidence-based Medical Information
Samarth has a dedicated team of doctors to provide the right evidence-based medical information, so that the medical fraternity has timely information of the latest developments and emerging procedures.
Uncompromised safety
As the patient always comes first for Samarth, they monitor safety at each step from the time of manufacturing till the product gets delivered to the pharmacies. Their team of scientists and pharmacists work relentlessly with strict standards of compliance to serve patients with global quality and safety standards.
Customer First Approach
Samarth has deployed people on ground and at all levels who communicate with the patient, listen to their needs and provide regular feedback to Senior Managers which help them in evolving customer-centric strategies.
Samarth will continue to be specialty-driven. As medical science evolves, so are the specialties evolving. At Samarth, the team works in concurrence with the evolving specialties to meet the patient needs so that the best of the medical endeavours is backed up by quality medicines from Samarth.
The manufacturing capabilities have been the organization’s core strength and have grabbed several awards in the landscape of manufacturing. These recognitions are a reflection of Samarth’s world class manufacturing practices coupled with state-of-art and WHO-GMP certified facilities. Samarth is now strengthening its capabilities through a foray into Biotechnology. They have started with isolating and purifying biological molecules from their natural sources like tissues and natural microbes and as a natural progression. They have also initiated work on the r-DNA technology, which reduces dependency on scarce natural sources as well as providing desired safe products.
Samarth is setting up a new state-of-the-art anti-cancer facility at Malaysia. The facility shall be operational from November 2021. This facility is built as compliant to PICS guidelines capable of manufacturing all the finished pharmaceutical dosage forms like lyophilized and liquid stable injectable, tablets, and capsules. Samarth’s capability in the development of advanced dosage forms like sustained releases and NDDS (Novel Drug Delivery Systems) shall be enhanced at this facility. Drug forms like microspheres, liposomes, and nano-particles would be manufactured at this facility with best-in-the-class equipment already validated by Samarth at its India facilities. The unmet medical needs of the region, particularly related to anti-cancer drugs shall be met through this facility. Samarth is also planning to set up a Biotech facility in Malaysia, which would again be supported by Samarth’s India facility for products and technologies. This facility shall focus on manufacturing bio-similar by recombinant DNA technology.
Samarth is gaining global footprints with export to 70 countries around the world & plans to strengthen this area across all continents by state-of-the-art manufacturing not only in India but also developing manufacturing capabilities outside the country. While the organization has grown organically, they have initiated partnerships with global firms such as Kemin & CID line, followed by others in pipeline.
Samarth as an organization works as a cohesive team across all the functions in the organization. The whole process of meeting the patient needs does not rest only with the sales and marketing team but gets interwoven between various functions of the organization working towards a common purpose. This gives Samarth a unique strength to meet customer needs & anticipate unmet needs. At Samarth, the talent pool is their strength. However, this gets accentuated because the capabilities are interwoven across functions with a clear focus on stakeholders. The strong value chain from procurement to manufacturing to distribution to marketing, sales & customer relationship management with zero debt financial prudence helps the organization to meet patient needs timely and with precision in quality.
The organization is driven by values that are pervasive. The inclusive ownership culture inspires every employee to work passionately for the common purpose of impacting lives positively & thereby adding life to life. The organization’s undeterred focus has been on the values that Samarth stands for – Patient driven approach with a high level of teamwork. Being a pharmaceutical company, great emphasis is laid on quality and an uncompromising component of integrity in each individual and function of the company. At Samarth, they believe that these Values are the foundation of their organization & it is important that they keep these values in sight as Samarth moves into a glorious future ahead.
