Legal heavyweights from Nishith Desai Associates, Anand and Anand, Corporate Law Group and EY partner and national cyber leader outline key compliance aspects that pharma and their global capability centers may need to factor as India moves to strengthen the framework for the protection of digital personal data.

Industry pundits talk about conversational AI for sales reps, the arrival of AI agents, a potential overhaul in the SaaS market for pharma enterprises and the tricky arena of influencer engagement in this instalment on key trends playing out on the tech front and in India. Expanding healthcare coverage is also improving the outlook for pharma in the country, they said.

From continuing consolidation on the home market, big pharma appetite to double down on capability centers and notable R&D advances including traction by a second CAR-T cell therapy, the Indian market looks set for an eventful 2025. Scrip spoke to a cross-section of experts to encapsulate some of the key trends in the first instalment of this two-part roundup.

2024 saw important regulatory changes in India including in areas such as GMP, clinical trials and efforts to rein in unethical marketing practices. Further action is expected to play out in the new year as well.

India cracks down on unethical marketing practices, with AbbVie in the eye of a storm for allegedly violating norms. While the action sends the right signal, a wider clean up including in the devices segment, where things may be “more harmful” may not be easy, say some experts.

The head of AI and automation in drug discovery at Merck KGaA’s life science business talked to Scrip about the company’s AI-powered platform that leverages a “gold mine” of proprietary R&D data, better in silico predictions and the next frontier of AI.