Contract research and manufacturing services (CRAMS) is a segment of the Indian pharmaceutical industry, which is in a stage of accelerated growth. The annual turnover of CRAMS is estimated to be $850 million. Over the last five years, contract manufacturing has contributed close to 8% of the pharmaceutical business in India.
Factors that have aided in the rapid rise of the CRAMS segment include:
- Specialty hospitals with state-of-the-art facilities (nearly 7,00,000 hospital beds and 221 medical colleges)
- Rich talent pool proficient in English
- Diverse population and diverse gene pool
- An increasing number of chronic diseases to study and analyse
- Diseases characteristic of developing and the developed countries
These factors are expected to propel CRAMS to grow at a compound annual growth rate of over 25%.
Micro Labs forayed into CRAMS in 2005. Our venture was built on concrete building blocks comprising of people with impressive skill sets, modern day infrastructure, and all around capabilities ranging from chemistry, formulation development, clinical research, IP and regulatory understanding. We have closed several deals in this space with partners ranging from big pharmaceutical companies to large generic houses. Products range from simple generic products to complicated combination products.
Our contract manufacturing services have developed unique NDDS platforms application, of which, the CNS and CVS areas hold tremendous value added to conventional IR molecules. Close to 10% of the company’s revenue comes from CRAMS. With more deals in the pipeline, the revenue from licensing fees and supply fees are likely to exceed US $ 100 million by 2012.