The visit to Emcure was certainly an interesting and fascinating experience. We visited the Emcure office on the 11th of October as a part of our Business Management and Economics class.
The objective of the trip was to allow us to witness the functioning of a business, economic aspects and make connections to the theoretical concepts we learn in class. We learnt that Emcure is a pharmaceutical company which is aiming to become the largest in the Indian pharmaceutical market. In short, Emcure is quite a unique fast-growing pharmaceutical company that produces a wide range of generic, and branded pharmaceutical products, in treating rare, yet fatal diseases. For years, the company had been operating only in the secondary sector, as a manufacturer for other globally established companies, with one of the biggest ones being Johnson and Johnson’s.
When Emcure realized its capability to possibly lead the market, they opened up in the tertiary sector, as well. It was a great threat, at first, but as the company started to represent a unique selling point in the market, great opportunities were created. A change in leadership with Mr. Vikas Thapar as CEO, and Ms. Namita Thapar as CFO, helped Emcure to expand into new markets, all around the world, and have various product developments. They commenced the exporting of Emcure’s products around 2008, and officially, they became a separate business. As a result of this, in today’s market, Emcure stands at 11th amongst the top companies in the Indian pharmaceutical industry, with a 3% market share. We could connect with various business and economic concepts that were implicitly used by Mr. Thapar in his presentation.
The objective of the trip was definitely achieved as we were introduced to the workings of the business, its model, goals and more. The visit to their factory was very amusing as we had an actual blister of pills being made before us. During our visit, we did not just gain insight into the business aspect but also was also able to gain some insights about how pharmaceutical companies work. To top this all we had an opportunity to have a question and answer session with the heads of the main departments like HR, R&D, Finance, Sales and Acquisition team. This allowed us to understand how the different areas of the business are dealt with and how the distribution of responsibility works within the business. Moreover, it reiterated much of what we learned in Business as well as Economics class. For instance, the importance of building brand image, the stakeholders in a business, importance of cost control, export related norms to be followed, aspects of an economy to be considered and more.
The trip was an educational opportunity but it was also refreshing to learn outside the bounds of the classroom. We were all fascinated with the fact that such a substantial organisation, in terms of both their work and reach, was situated so close to our school and we would have never even known. We also learned about Emcure’s CSR and it helped us to understand how companies approach CSR depending on their industry and their position. Overall, this was a very fruitful learning experience and the team at Emcure was very welcoming and made sure that the experience was incredible for all of us. Some notes we took during the presentations:
– Akash and Sanjana.
