Better healthcare professionals, world class facilities for treatment and accessibility to medicinal drugs, in the past decade or so the healthcare industry has witnessed massive transformation across the board in India. Pharmaceutical industry in particular could be credited for this remarkable growth. The Indian pharmaceutical industry now is the world's 3rd largest by volume and 14th largest in terms of value. And with advancement in engineering, automation, software technologies, India has become the largest provider of affordable generic drugs in the domestic and global markets.

Where on one hand, India's pharmaceutical sector has matured into a major component of the country's foreign trade, on the other hand, the pharma industry is plagued by the pervasive problem of counterfeiting. The Indian pharmaceutical market is no exception to the problem, with fake drugs forming about 20 percent of the 40,000 crore Pharma market in India.

Based out of Ahmedabad, URL Aseptic Automation Inc. an engineering company with expertise in software & automation is helping fight the pressing issue of counterfeit drugs in India with their state-of-the-art pharmaceutical serialization & traceability solutions.

Talking about the prevalent problem of pharmaceutical counterfeiting in India, founder and director of URL, Lokesh Patel says, "We all are directly or indirectly affected by counterfeit in some or other way. Especially in rural areas, most of the products are counterfeit as those areas are out of reach for brands. Today thousands of

pharma brands are at stake in India, as counterfeiting of pharmaceuticals not only poses a serious threat to patients in terms of direct harm, treatment failure or drug resistance cases, but also drug manufacturers who suffer from counterfeiting of pharmaceuticals and experience loss of market share and revenue. To combat this problem, we at URL offer pharmaceutical serialization & traceability solutions of all types, right from Primary packaging up to allet serialization as per international guidelines like US, EU, Russia, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan China and more”.

Transforming Pharmaceutical Industry
With an exhaustive experience of over 12+ Years & installation base of 225+packaging lines, URL has become one of the pioneers in pharmaceutical serialization. With a larger vision to fight against the serious threat of counterfeit medicines, URL believes in partnering with their clients to successfully run their Pharmaceutical Serialization [Track & Trace] solution.

URL does not rely on any 3rd party vendors to provide technical solutions to their clients. The organization, engineers & manufactures pharma machines to provide end-to-end solutions, from primary packaging to palletization. Utilizing cutting edge technologies that include big data analysis, SCADA & PLC programming, and IOT deployment, URL continuously innovates to serve their customers with latest & compliant systems.

Talking about the added challenge of unawareness around the counterfeiting threat, Lokesh Patel mentions "Pharmaceutical Serialization [Track & Trace] is an emerging topic as well as a vast subject to completely comprehend. We can't expect our customers to know fully & hence educating them is a continuous process. Providing sustained training to our customers after sales is a key challenge which we successfully take on to help our client with SOP adherence, documentation, in process sampling, and audit trails for compliance. We help them comply with global common standards and guidelines for safe exports”.

Path Ahead
In a short period since inception, URL has managed to build an impressive client portfolio which includes multinational companies like Hetero, Baxter, Biological E, Sanofi, Gland, etc. The firm is also appointed as consultants by DCVMN(Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers Network, Switzerland) and has successfully completed a Primary Serialization project with Biological E Ltd. Hyderabad.

Shedding light on future plans for URL, Founder Lokesh Patel shares, "We are expanding our manufacturing facility to almost three times to cater to the ever growing requirements of the Indian pharmaceutical market. We also intend to make our service support available 24/7 in the coming 6 months. Additionally, we are collaborating with many other pharmaceutical machinery manufacturers to enhance and improve our current pharmaceutical serialization [Track & Trace] solution”.