CROs in India have grown accustomed to galling year-over-year growth of late, but factors like currency exchange rates and bad PR have slowed the business down over the past few months, CEOs say.
Douglas Berthiaume, CEO of Waters ($WAT), told investors that the lagging rupee has forced Indian CROs to delay spending. And Sigma-Aldrich ($SIAL) CEO Rakesh Sachdev said the Indian CRO market has come back to earth after "obscene" growth in the past, Outsourcing-Pharma reports.
But currency is hardly the only factor. March's "Dateline" report on unethical trial practices by Indian CROs has cast a wide shadow, and many pharmas remain wary of doing clinical research business in the country, one analyst told Outsourcing-Pharma. The exposé, focused on Lambda Therapeutic Research and Synchron Research Services, found the companies willing to test dangerous drugs on Indian patients while paying them fractions of normal rates.
Furthermore, the Indian government has gradually begun regulating CROs more strictly, according to ACRO's John Lewis, and this is driving some multinational pharmas to look elsewhere for their trials.
- read the Outsourcing-Pharma report