Sproxil wins first customers in India

Brand protection specialist Sproxil has extended its operations from Africa into India, with new clients signed up in the pharmaceutical hubs of Mumbai and Bangalore, according to chief executive Ashifi Gogo.

Sproxil's main focus is its Mobile Product Authentication platform, which enables consumers to verify the authenticity of a pharmaceutical product by sending the unique code on the drug as a free text message to the manufacturers, in real time.

The mobile subscriber base is more than 812 million in India, and growing exponentially, according to the company.

"India has one of the largest pharmaceutical markets in the world but is plagued by counterfeit medicines made elsewhere that tarnish brand India," said Gogo.

"Our services enable Indian companies to reduce the presence of counterfeit medicines by connecting companies directly to their consumers in a scalable manner, using mobile phones," he added.

Sproxil is initially working with clients in the area of antimalarial medicines, Gogo told SecuringPharma.com.

The Sproxil anti-counterfeit labels have already been rolled out in Nigeria on products from GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson and Merck KGaA, amongst others, with plans afoot to expand into other countries including Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

India is seen as a key growth market for the company, given the attention being paid to anti-counterfeiting efforts by the Indian government. The country has already approved plans to add serial numbers to all exported medicines, and there is speculation that serialisation could eventually be extended to include domestically-distributed medicines as well.

One suggestion is that the serial number - or unique identifier (UID) - should be made available in human-readable format to allow consumers to self-authenticate their medicines by sending the UID via SMS for verification (see also India planning barcodes, SMS authentication for all medicines?).

"India forms an integral part of Sproxil's global strategy, and we are launching in two cities, Bangalore and Mumbai, as more than 80 per cent of the Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers are based in the West and the South of India," said Gogo.

India ships drugs to over 150 countries worldwide, and Indian manufacturers are key suppliers of drugs to emerging markets where counterfeiting is often an issue.