Encube - Contract manufacturer focused on marketing

, MD of Encube Ethicals. He has left no stone unturned to make his organisation future-ready. Today, this SME that's exclusively into contract manufacturing of dermatological pharma products is spreading across the boundary to lay claim to international business.

What is the kind of challenge one faces to scale up and establish professionalism in business?

As far as Encube Ethicals is concerned, sure it has been a long and arduous eight-year journey. We are exclusively into contract manufacturing of dermatological products i.e. creams, lotions, ointments and gels. Our clients include players in the field such as Aventis, Galderma (the No. 1 dermatological company in the world), Micro Labs and Sandoz.

Apart from contract manufacturing, we do formulation R&D, dossier development for regulated markets, pilot and scale facility to the customer. And in addition to domestic market, we are also into exports.

To have come this far has certainly required a focus on quality and disciplined approach to work, which in turn has given us critical references. Alongside, the organisation has worked on development of internal systems in various ways.

For instance, we have recently implemented SAP. In fact, Encube happens to be the smallest pharma (contract manufacturing) customer in the world for SAP -- which goes to show the strength of our system and procedures. In other words, by implementing SAP, we are taking proactive steps towards decentralising our organisation so that it becomes scaleable. Normally, SMEs tend to control everything, which eventually is not conducive to growth.

How does this reflect in the growth of the organisation?

Well, all I can say is that this growth is apparent if one looks at the genesis and the current stature of the organisation. My father got into pharma contract manufacturing in the early Sixties. I joined my father in 1986 was after graduating in pharmacy and a business management course. We earlier were contract manufacturers for Crosslands that eventually got merged into Ranbaxy.

In 1998, we constructed and commissioned a factory in Goa and 2004 proved to be a breakthrough year for us. This is when we secured the Health Canada Approval, we were first in the country for derma products to have done so. This was followed by TGA Australia approval and we are one of very few companies to export derma products to Japan. All this, of course, in addition to the fact that we are an ISO 9002 company and have the WHO GMP approval.

Our current turnover is Rs 15 crore and we are targetting Rs 50 crore in next three years. We have begun the process of capacity expansion that is being done at the cost of Rs 20 crore. Our current capacity is 45 million units a year, but post-investment, it will be 127 million units p.a. Also our current manufacturing plant is spread across 48,000 sq ft and will increase to 1.48 lakh sq ft by next year.

All this is being done as we see our market expanding. This year, the organisation is targetting to get approval from South Africa-MCC and U.K-MHRA. Next year, the focus will be to seek US FDA approval. In terms of domestic market, derma pharma represents only 4-5 per cent of the entire pharma market, and we are targeting to be leaders in this market - in terms of manufacturing capabilities.

What role does marketing play in contract manufacturing?

Well, in our kind of work marketing is focused on selling our facilities of our clients. As one needs references, contacts, hence, we have to proactive in selling our infrastructure, establishing our ability to deliver quality and gain stature on basis of our client base. Clients like to visit our facility and seek to know our process and we have to be thorough on this front. Obviously our effort has worked and we are right now in the process of finalising new global customers.