Reliance Pharma shaping up for launch in 2 years

Reliance Pharmaceuticals (RPL), the proposed pharmaceutical manufacturing company promoted by Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Life Sciences, will soon rope in a consultant to give final shape to the project, slated to take off within two years.

"At present everything is in an inhouse designed blue print. We need to rope in an expert consultant to work on this, and then finalise the project, execution and design of the plants. The process of selecting the consultant will start soon and it may take about five to six months to finalise the project," said Lalit Kumar, president and chief executive officer, RPL.

Kumar added that Reliance was planning to create huge capacities with large investments worth 'several hundred crores' for making generic (copy cat versions) versions of drugs going off-patent, and focus on developing capacities for the export markets. Apart from formulation sales, the supply of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for large pharmaceutical companies would be another major area of focus for the company. The process would take many years - at least five to ten years - to establish RPL as a major player in the field of pharmaceuticals, he said.

Commenting on RPL's drug research plans, he said it would initially focus on creating a research and development set up for developing new drug delivery platforms. "We need to develop a team for the drug research work. The team should expand over the years to become a large R&D set up, he said, while talking to Business Standard on the sidelines of a pharmaceutical summit organised by Frost & Sullivan in Goa, this week.

He said the project would probably come up at a special economic zone in Jamnagar, Gujarat. Work on the first plant is likely to start by the end of this year and production in pilot scale may begin within another one year.