On course for growth: Körber further expands pharmaceutical portfolio in India

Question: Until now, Indian customers have known Körber primarily for its market-leading Werum PAS-X Manufacturing Execution System (MES) for pharmaceuticals, biotech and cell & gene therapies. Now Körber is expanding its portfolio in India. Can you tell us more about this?

Rajesh Vedak: In the past, we have put a special focus on software, after all we have the market leading MES, Werum PAS-X, in our portfolio! At the same time, we already count well over 100 installations of our inspection and packaging machines for pharmaceutical manufacturers in India, which have been sold and supported through various Indian agents and our European locations to date. As the demand for our consulting and software solutions as well as machines and services continues to grow, we have decided to serve India as one of the most strategic markets within Asia ourselves and strengthen our team of highly qualified service technicians for the machinery division, who support our customers on site and speak the local language. This further expansion of our product portfolio in India is logically the next milestone in the consistent growth strategy that Körber is pursuing in Asia. 

Question: What does this growth strategy look like? 

Asia is one of the most important growth markets for Körber! For our Business Area Pharma, for example, our annual order intake from Asia has shown very strong growth compared to the previous year. Körber is responding to this with a growing local presence, among other things. Including the sales, service and software development offices in India, the Business Area has a total of eight sites in Asia, including China, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea and Japan. With its huge pharmaceutical manufacturing base, India is a particularly important and promising market for Körber. We are striving for future growth by supporting digitization journeys of local big and mid-size pharma manufactures. Here we are ensuring the effective utilization of manufacturing data not only to enable manufacturers to take real time business decisions but also to perform predictive analysis with focus on data analytics and artificial intelligence, all with the goal to improve the return on investment.

Question: Where your teams are located and how many employees do you have here in total? 

Our headquarters are in Mumbai, and we also have two other Indian locations in Bangalore and Pune. We have a long presence in India since early 2009. After establishing ourselves well we started our own office with a team of five people and have since grown to be a team of around 100! And we will continue to grow. And as already described at the beginning, we now not only have a high-performance sales team, but also a powerful service and support team in both software and machinery. In addition, our customers benefit from specially trained software experts who not only implement and execute our PAS-X MES at local sites in India, but also support global customers. We are privileged to be partner of choice for the top 20 pharma manufacturers, supporting them in their MES and digitization journey beyond. We are also humbled to receive this important recognition ‘Best Bioprocessing Supplier Award: Automation – Software’ at 9th Annual Biologics Manufacturing Asia 2022 conference, Singapore in March 2022. We appreciate this reflecting our commitment towards our customers. By the way, customers and prospects can get an insight into the possibilities and benefits offered by an MES from November 22 to 23, when we host the Pharma Software Summit, Connext India, in Mumbai. 

Question: What are the advantages for customers from the pharmaceutical industry? What do your customers appreciate about working with Körber?

Pharma manufacturers in India face many challenges today such as digitization, introduction of cutting-edge technologies, change management, org culture, workforce readiness and many more. As we have been active in the global and local pharma industry for decades, we understand these challenges and offer our customers tailor made solutions that go far beyond individual softwares or machines. This so-called "Körber Ecosystem" that we offer our customers is unique in the industry because we not only use our own expertise in the areas of consulting, inspection, transport systems, packaging machines and materials, track & trace and software. We also leverage the know-how of other Körber Business Areas, such as Supply Chain, for the benefit of our customers and can seamlessly integrate third-party solution or system providers. The customer thus receives everything from a single source. 

Thank you for this interview!

About Körber

Körber is an international technology group with about 12,000 employees, more than 100 locations worldwide and a common goal: We turn entrepreneurial thinking into customer success and shape the technological change. In the Business Areas Digital, Pharma, Supply Chain, Tissue and Technologies, we offer products, solutions and services that inspire.

At Business Area Pharma, we deliver the difference along the entire pharmaceutical value chain by offering a unique portfolio of integrated solutions. Based on in-depth experience spanning consulting, inspection, transport systems, packaging machines and materials, track and trace and software, we understand the challenges in pharmaceutical processes and regulation that our customers face day to day, from the beginning to the end of their production. For them, we deliver the difference to unlock the potential of global pharmaceutical and biotech manufacturing.

www.koerber-pharma.com