Express Pharma Pulse Awards enters its fourth year

It’s yet another year, and time to salute the stalwarts of the pharmaceutical industry. The annual Express Pharma Pulse Awards, 2004 will be held on May 28, 2004 at The Grand Hyatt, Mumbai.

This initiative by the Indian Express Group’s Business Publications Division has been successfully recognising and honouring excellence in the Indian pharmaceutical industry. It has been instituted by Express Pharma Pulse, the country’s leading weekly for the pharmaceutical industry for nearly a decade now.

This year, Express Pharma Pulse has an addition to the list of existing awards, the “Excellence in Research” award acknowledges and encourages the R&D efforts of pharmaceutical companies.

The awards are divided in two categories: Overall Performance Category and Special Category with six awards in the former and five in the latter.

The exercise of choosing winners starts with ORG-IMS data that scans the top 300 companies and categorises them into groups based upon market share. A panel of judges comprising industry experts evaluates the companies on four parameters: market share, growth, new products and sales. The parameters reflect the functional areas of the company that contribute to its overall performance. The shortlisted companies are then given points and ranked accordingly. The top five companies are selected from each group and the one with the highest score wins.

The five awards in the Special Category are Lifetime Contribution Award (personality), Best Exporter (company), Special Recognition (company), Best Bulk Drug Company and Excellence in Research. The entire selection process by the jury members is objective and based on quantifiable parameters leaving little scope for subjective evaluation.

This year the judges are D G Shah, CEO Vision Consulting Group, Nachiket Mor, executive director, ICICI Bank, Premal Parekh, partner, Ernst & Young, Dr Arun S Nanivadekar, medical consultant, Dr S N Maity, controller general of patents, designs and trademarks and N V Ramamurthy, editor, Express Pharma Pulse.