Case 6-3 Eli Lilly in India: Rethinking the Joint Venture Strategy
The Indian Pharmaceutical Industry in the past fifty years
• 1947: The Country had no indigenous capability to produce pharmaceuticals, and was dependent on imports.
• 1954: During this year the first public sector drug company, Hindustan Antibiotics Limited (HAL) was established.
• 1961: In this year another company started his business Indian Drugs and pharmaceutical Limited (IDPL).
• 1970: This decade saw many changes that would dramatically change the intellectual property regime and give rise to the emergence of local manufacturing companies. This changes were the passage of the patent Act 1970 that abolished the product patents, and the drug price control by which the government stipulated prices for all products. With the institution of both the DPCO and the 1970 Patent Act, drugs became available more cheaply, and local firms were encouraged to make copies of drugs by developing their own processes.
• 1984: During this year the Indian’s government suffered many changes following Gandhi’s assassination.
• 1990: The dawn of the 1990s saw India initiating economic reform and embracing globalization.
• 1990: The government began the process of liberalization and moving the economy away from import substitution to an export- driven economy.
Eli Lilly and Company History
Eli Lilly and Company grew from a tiny laboratory in Indianapolis in 1876 to one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies.
Colonel Eli Lilly, a pharmacist who had served as a Union officer in the American Civil War, acquired a laboratory on Pearl Street in Indianapolis in 1876 and started Eli Lilly and Company. His innovative process of gelatin-coating pills helped establish the success of the company. When Eli Lilly died in 1898, his son Josiah K. Lilly Sr. took control of the company. Josiah inherited his father's civic mindedness and ordered the company to send much...