CHALLENGES FACED BY CHINESE MEDICAL DEVICES (IVD) AND PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES IN PAKISTAN HEALTHCARE MARKET

Pakistan healthcare market have been dominating by western IVD & pharma raw material supplier’s & companies. Now especially during pandemic many Chinese companies have entered Pakistan market. But in comparison to history and sales trends/surveys. European and American company’s sales are still high in market. These western brands in IVD are including Abbott, Roche, beckmen Coulter, Thermo, BD, perkin Elemer, Medtronic. In pharma mainly GSK, Phizer, Servier, Abbott etc. Whereas only couple of Chinese companies including Mindrey have been able to perform better in last few years. Whereas most of Chinese companies even bearing CE & FDA marked products are still striving to get good sales in our market. Let’s look at some of reasons why Chinese company’s sales are slow in market. What obstacles being faced despite being somehow competitive in terms of quality and even available as very economical option to our non-affording healthcare market.

1-During past many years European and American brands have established their subsidiaries and direct offices in some cases. They have became well in touch with end users. I mean hospitals in case of IVD medical devices and consultant doctors in case of pharmaceutical companies. If we visit Labs and hospitals, we shall see direct representatives of above mentioned western IVD brands. Similarly if we visit “consultant doctors clinics”. There we shall see ‘Medical representatives” of western pharmaceutical companies waiting in cue for “consultant doctors” for their “medical sales call”. Whereas Chinese companies have still been poor in direct selling in our market.

2- Chinese Companies great dependency is still with ‘distributer”. Only very few Chinese companies have established direct offices and have started engaging end user otherwise most of Chinese IVD companies and pharma companies mainly dealing through distributers. So they face issues both ways, firstly unable to locate exact distributer sitting in China matching with their company’s corporate culture or will find the one doing multiple companies distributionship at same time or may find a distributer with a poor sales approach or poor network to engage end user. So when end user will not be satisfied, Chinese companies will remain unable to replicate their sales rather will face more bottlenecks.

3- There are very less direct sales staff of Chinese company’s resultantly they are getting information through “Distributors” about end user. Who know’s how much credible information they are getting. Keeping close eyes with “end user’s priorities” is major turning point for a sales strategy. Because satisfaction of hospitals or consultant doctors using equipment or medicine is what really matters for a manufacturer or a company.

4- Sales queries followup through a distributer have been another matter of concern when end user knows that he is not directly dealing with company representative rather a third party. This will contribute declining or closing maturity of sales queries Vs raised sales queries in market for a particular company’s product.

5- Some Chinese medical devices performance have been great but after sale technical service have been pathetic or not satisfactory. Resultantly clients will not make repeated purchase decisions despite being available as an economical option.

6- Chinese companies usually approaching Karachi,Lahore,Islamabad for distributionships, leaving aside rest of many potential cities with good healthcare market set-ups. These include Multan, Faislabad, Sialkot, Sukkar, Sargodha, Rahim Yar Khan, Hyderabad, Quetta, Peshawar, bannu, Attock, Kohat. So limited coverage of their target market is also effecting their sales both for pharma & IVD devices.

7- Once a distributer or sales person is selected by Chinese company. Nobody is here to monitor maintaining company’s quality standards for distributer’s performance or for a salesman performance. Distanced reporting from Chinese company’s sales manager/regional managers are being made avoiding ground realities in most of cases. Whereas responsibility of sales management increases once a “distributer” or “sales person” is recruited. Maintaining quality work of both distributer & sales representative becomes more challenging when manufacturer/company do not know’s end users directly. In such cases local experienced “Sales consultants” with credible experience in local markets may be very helpful settling issues on both ends, on part of distributers as well as on part of ‘Sales teams”.

8- Still there is lack of information on Chinese company’s side about regulatory bodies like DRAP (Drug Regulatory Authority). Which is main department for registrations of Medical devices & pharmaceutical products. Updated direct information will help companies avoiding waste of their time for product registrations, license and permits as well. Hence make them more competitive with their western competitors.

For further contact:

Writer: Khurram Saleem

E.mail: [email protected]

Mob# 923004128489 (Whatsapp also)