India Pavilion star attraction at 2017 INTERPHEX in New York City

- ADVERTISEMENT -

NEW YORK: India Pavilion, hosting a cluster of booths from several India-based companies, was a star attraction at the 2017 International Pharmaceutical Expo (INTERPHEX), at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan, on Tuesday. The expo runs through Thursday, March 23.

The India Pavilion was inaugurated on Tuesday by the Consul General of India in New York, Riva Ganguly Das. India is the only country to have a special section at the annual expo, sponsored by the Parenteral Drug Association (PDA).

For the past 38 years, INTERPHEX is the premier pharmaceutical, biotechnology, device development and manufacturing event where one can, according to the organizers, ‘experience science through commercialization.’ This year, the event is expected to bring over 11,500 global industry professionals and 625 plus industry leading suppliers together.

Apart from the India Pavilion section, India-based companies were located throughout the massive meet.

Rishal Shah, the Managing Director of Jekson Vision – a company founded in New Jersey in 2001, after he graduated from Penn State with an engineering degree in 1998, with money he saved doing part-time jobs, and today a $30 million business employing 200 people, with offices in Ahmedabad, Dubai and New Jersey – was one of the Indian entrepreneurs who came down for the expo.

Jekson Vision is the world’s leading provider of Machine Vision Inspection Systems for pharmaceutical companies, with focus on providing machine vision for industrial automated inspections. They have 70% market share in India.

Shah, who’s now based in India, explained in an interview to News India Times that his innovative technology was not patented, as India is lax on protecting Intellectual Property Rights. The company has in the last 10 years added more than 200 pharmaceutical companies to its list of customers.

“There are not enough measures (by the government) to protect patents,” said Shah. “It’s better to keep it a secret.”

The issue of poor protection for patents in India was a common refrain among other entrepreneurs too at the meet.

Sumit Ghadiali, who, along with his brother Vipul Ghadiali, run the around $4 million tableting tools and machines company Shamdew, based in Navasari, Gujarat, echoed the same views as Shah, in an interview to News India Times. The company was started by their father Praful Ghadiali 25 years ago.

“We don’t want to patent as there is too much of ‘nakal’ (copying) in India,” said Sumit Ghadiali, who along with his brother, manned a booth at the expo. “We manage to stay ahead of our competitors because of the stability of our machines.”

Some of the companies who were clustered in the India Pavilion included Medical Elaborate Concept Ltd. From Jalandhar, Punjab; Thermolab, from Thane, Maharashtra; VLAC, from Ahmedabad, Gujarat; and Parth Engineers & Consultant, from Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

Earlier in the morning, six companies were named as INTERPHEX Exhibitor Award winners to kick off the meet.

The top honors went to technology on display from Asahi Kasei Bioprocess; Bio-Rad Laboratories; Nemera; Watson-Marlow Fluid Technology Group; Bausch & Ströebel Machine Company, and Millipore-Sigma.

The awards, sponsored by Pharmaceutical Processing, were offered in six categories: Best in Show; Best New Product/Service; Editor’s Choice; Best Technological Innovation; Efficiency Champion, and Biotech Innovation Award.