Express Healthcare

‘We are targeting to extend our presence in smaller cities’

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What is the size of OMRON Healthcare business in India?

Shinya Tomoda

OMRON healthcare is the global leader in healthcare products. We established our offices in India in 2005, and more recently, Gurgaon has been established as the focal point. The unit contributes little more than Rs 2.5 crores to our corpus and we plan to take it further.

What is the size of blood glucose monitoring products market in India?

Globally, the self blood glucose monitoring industry is valued over $1.5 billion. With 40 million diabetic patients and an equal number of people estimated to be diabetic prone, India is emerging as a major market for blood glucose monitoring solutions. In the US, people having the disease check their blood glucose levels even up to six times a day, whereas in India, the patients don’t even check their blood glucose levels on a regular basis unless directed by their doctor. Studies say that diabetes induced death can be brought down by 52 per cent if the insulin levels in the body are regularly monitored and controlled.

Indian medical devices and diagnostics market is estimated to reach Rs 275 billion and the country is fast emerging as the diagnostic capital of the world.

What share of this market is held by OMRON Healthcare?

We have 57 per cent (unit base) market share in the blood pressure monitor market in India. With the launch of our new range of blood glucose monitor our range of healthcare products is complete and we look forward to continue being the market leader with similar impetus. We are looking towards increasing our company’s healthcare retail network by 25 per cent in the next 12 months. This in turn will help us to reach a target of 33,900 retail stores including pharmacies and surgical shops in the Indian market by FY15.

How is OMRON’s product different from the current products available in the market?

All our home-use healthcare devices, health management services, and testing devices for medical institutions are based on our propriety biometric sensing technology. Designed on superior technology, we have not compromised in any of the attributes of quality product and at the same time our products are very easy on the pockets. We believe that monitoring starts at home, for which, ease of accessibility is of utmost importance without compromising on the quality. Our recently unveiled products HGM-111 and HGM-112 are very economically priced, ultra light weight (26 gms only!) and uses auto – coding technology.

How would you address the price point issue as India is demanding less expensive diagnostics?

Our market analysis says that in India, there are two price zones for home use diagnostic tools and machines – especially for blood glucose monitors. Below Rs 1000 is one price zone and the other is below Rs 2000. Our products cater to both segments and of course even to higher end consumers.

We have managed to penetrate the market exceptionally well with our strength of coupling quality with competent pricing and our results have showed it to be the best strategy to enhance our reach in Indian healthcare market.

What are OMRON’s revenue expectations in India through this product?

We are aiming for nearly three—fold increase in revenues in India by FY15 for which we will expand presence in the country.

We are present in the country through a wholly—owned subsidiary, currently sell our healthcare products through 17,500 retail stores across India. Our aim is to reach $43 million in sales in India by FY15 from the $14 million in FY12.

Are you are looking to expand OMRON’s presence in India. Please elaborate?

As mentioned above, we are convinced that India is going to be one of the main economic forces in the near future. In line with above fact, OMRON’s new 10-year strategy “Value Generation 2020” held in July 2011, emphasises on achieving growth in emerging markets such as China, Brazil, and India. We plan to better understand our client needs in India market and build new products or services that will help healthcare organisations have better information that will lead to better decisions and healthcare outcomes. We are keen to contribute to areas such as patient safety, increasing quality and efficiency of care and making it affordable to a larger section of society.

It was reported in the media that OMRON Healthcare will shift its focus to hospitals from pharmacies. Please comment.

OMRON is a company that cultivates tomorrow by anticipating future societies. Anticipating the needs of future generations is our daily inspiration and a way of doing business. Continuous innovation, both in our products and marketing strategy, coupled with benefit to society is the core of OMRON.

Currently, our products are through ‘over the counter’ channel and OMRON conducted seminars to demonstrate to heads of pharmacies on how to use our devices, augment their understanding and disseminate knowledge on the appropriate role of instruments in health management. We also collaborated with the Indian Society of Hypertension to support a large scale clinical study involving leading doctors from Japan, Canada and India. However, we also have future plans to launch products for hospital use. OMRON is a major supplier of home-use healthcare devices and talks with big hospitals are on to supply our products.

This requires doubling of our efforts and broadening our horizons with keeping our focus on mass reach.

Would OMRON be hiring new employees?

India has been a key region for growth for OMRON and we are quite bullish about the market. We are currently moving rapidly to reinforce operations in India by increasing the number of industrial automation and healthcare equipment sales bases and boosting the number of system engineers and sales personnel. We are targeting to extend our presence in smaller cities. We are present in Tier-I cities but we are concentrating on going to Tier-II cities as part of our growth strategy. This, inevitably calls for more investments and more skilled resources.

mneelam.kachhap@expressindia.com

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