He appears reserved, even quiet from a distance. But when Pradip Dave talks about the post-patent industry in India, his stately manner transforms into the youthful vibrancy of a man half his age. His passion is palpable, as if he has just discovered a new labor of love. But his work isn’t new; Dave has projected this same passion for the 30 years he’s been in the agrochemical business, and his excitement and enthusiasm are evident through his animated discussions and antics about exports and international competition.
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“All of my life I have fought for the prosperity of the Indian agrochemical industry,” Dave says with satisfaction. “People used to say I taught them how to do exports; I’ve always felt that we have to ensure that everyone survives in this business, and if it is driven by exports, as it has been, then that is what we will do.”
India’s post-patent production has been on a three-decade rise, and Dave has done more than witness it; he helped engineered it as the 20-year president of the Pesticides Manufacturers & Formulators Association of India (PMFAI) and the founder of Aimco Pesticides. When Dave started going to BCPC in Brighton (UK) in 1981, he was one of the only post-patent formulators in the exhibition. At the time, India exported about US$30 million in formulated product. Today, India exports more than $800 million worth of agrochemicals.
Todos los negocios
But the meteoric rise wasn’t easy. The mentor to half the country’s agrochemical producers was a trailblazer at BCPC’s Brighton Congress in the early 1980s. Back then, the industry was largely controlled by basic manufacturers on the international stage. Generic formulators were relegated to regional success, especially in India.
“Basic producers would ask me, ‘What are you doing here?’ They told me that producers like us were not good for the industry,” Dave says.
Pero Pradip cambió eso. Reconociendo las diversas oportunidades de BCPC, Dave comenzó a traer delegaciones más grandes de toda la India. Comenzó a promover el evento en todo el país, y BCPC, a su vez, ayudó a numerosas empresas indias a ganar publicidad internacional.
The country’s largest companies, including United Phosphorus Limited (UPL), have been encouraged by Dave. Sulphur Mills, Rotam India, Bharat Group, Meghmani, Northern Minerals and many others also credit Dave with encouraging their business through his industry knowledge, understanding of international markets and pride in Indian manufacturing.
In the early days of UPL, Founder and Chairman Rajju Shroff says his company was “relatively small,” mainly selling rodenticides and fumigants to local markets. But it was looking to acquire other producers in strategic markets to gain access to global opportunities, a tactic that has helped propel the company into the fourth-largest post-patent agrochemical company in the world with $937 million in revenues in 2008. Shroff recalls a time when he was looking to acquire a British company, and he asked for Dave’s advice about the venture. Shroff says he was surprised at the depth in which Dave was able to talk about the company’s products and offerings, as well as market demand for its products.
“He knew more about the company and its products [than I did].”
Rotam India es otra empresa que ha recibido el apoyo de Dave. El director de Rotam India, Rajiv Pandit, dice que Dave siempre estuvo ansioso por alentar a las empresas a hacer más negocios en el extranjero, y fue un organizador líder de eventos de la industria y oportunidades promocionales para familiarizar mejor al mundo con la industria agroquímica de la India.
“Pradip’s help and encouragement has helped me gain a lot of confidence, which naturally resulted in the success of our business,” Pandit says. “He encouraged small-scale formulators to explore export business and also encouraged companies to do synthesis of technical product.”
Y como cualquier buen mentor, siguió su propio consejo. Dave comenzó su carrera trabajando para el negocio comercial de su familia a partir de la década de 1960. Con el tiempo, fundó Aimco Pesticides, con sede en Bombay, en 1990 gracias a los insecticidas, herbicidas y fungicidas de marca. Ahora se desempeña como presidente de la empresa pública con ingresos de aproximadamente $30 millones durante los últimos 12 meses que terminan el 31 de marzo. La empresa ahora también fabrica varios pesticidas de grado técnico, algunos de los productos clave son clorpirifos, temefos, cipermetrina, permetrina, hexaconazol. , glifosato, triclopir y fluroxipir en una variedad de formulaciones, que incluyen líquidos, polvos humectables, polvos para espolvorear, concentrados en suspensión y fluidos secos.
Y aunque ha dirigido y puesto en marcha negocios rentables, su verdadero reclamo de prestigio en la India ha sido como el defensor preeminente de las exportaciones de plaguicidas de la India en todo el mundo. Y sus búsquedas lo han llevado a numerosas organizaciones, algunas de las cuales comenzó a adaptarse a las necesidades de la industria, si es que aún no existían.
Asociación Nación
Además de ser presidente de la asociación de fabricantes y formuladores de pesticidas más grande del país, Dave también es miembro fundador del órgano de gobierno de la Fundación Chemtech; vicepresidente del Consejo de Exportación de Productos Químicos Básicos, Farmacéuticos y Cosméticos y presidente de la Sociedad de la Industria Química de la India, con sede en Londres, Reino Unido.
Dave ha dirigido PMFAI durante 20 años, llevando la organización de unas pocas docenas de miembros cuando tomó el timón a más de 350 en la actualidad. PMFAI promueve el uso seguro y juicioso de agroquímicos, y sus miembros incluyen multinacionales, fabricantes básicos de todos los tamaños, fabricantes de intermedios requeridos para pesticidas, así como consultores, fabricantes auxiliares, asociaciones comerciales e individuos.
But more importantly than what PMFAI is, is what PMFAI does: The advocacy group often lobbies the government on behalf on the industry, taking legal means when the need arises. Dave has been the industry’s courtroom crusader during the past 20 years that he has led the organization.
In 1997, India’s taxation department instituted a backdated recovery excise duty, valued at about $40 million. Seeing an obvious strain on the agrochemical industry, Dave fought the levy all the way to the Supreme Court of India, which eventually found in favor of PMFAI, and the industry was not required to pay.
Dave also defended India’s “Me Too” registration. Since the creation of India’s Insecticide Act of 1968, formulators have enjoyed a Me Too registration approval. But the government, after a move by multinationals to protect their voluminous test data for five years to 10 years after the 20-year patent protection, moved to require Me Too registration applicants to provide their own data when applying for registration. The change would have effectively deferred market access in India until actives were re-registered with different manufacturers. This was a political quandary in India, so much so that Commerce Ministry, after saying it favored a data exclusivity period of three years to five years, suddenly deferred the matter to the Agriculture Ministry and the Department of Chemicals & Petrochemicals.
En 2007, después de más de cuatro años de testimonios y debates, el Departamento de Químicos y Petroquímicos se negó a otorgar exclusividad de datos para agroquímicos.
“Pradip is well known for taking up cases on behalf of the industry and fighting with the government when there were some wrong decisions,” Shroff says. “He has taken the government to court and won cases; very few people have done this, and that is why I admire him.”
Shortly after the victory for Me Too registrations, the post-patent industry was under attack again as advocacy groups fought to ban endosulfan, an active that India leads the world in use of, and it is also home to many manufacturers. The Indian government banned the agent after it was suspected to be linked to a series of abnormalities in children, but PMFAI was able to present scientific data that validated endosulfan’s efficacy and safety and effectively overturned the ban. The case was defended by a review committee in court to protect the molecule for Indian companies. Subsequently, India has blocked attempts to add the molecule to international watch lists, including those of the World Health Organization and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Dave ha posicionado a PMFAI como una organización experta para reguladores, una función necesaria para proteger la longevidad de los productores de genéricos y su capacidad para controlar su sustento a medida que los reguladores apuntan a los activos heredados a favor de las químicas más nuevas. Y ahora está llevando ese concepto a nivel mundial, con un poco de ayuda de otras asociaciones.
PMFAI es un socio fundador de AgroCare, que se incorporó en Bruselas el año pasado para ayudar a generar datos y testificar ante las agencias reguladoras internacionales cuando surgen preguntas sobre la sostenibilidad de los productos químicos que provienen de patentes. Junto con PMFAI, los otros fundadores de AgroCare son la Asociación Latinoamericana de Agroquímicos (ALINA), una federación de 27 países; la European Crop Care Association (ECCA), que representa a empresas en 11 países; y la Asociación de la Industria de Protección de Cultivos de China.
AgroCare reúne los recursos de estas organizaciones para proporcionar datos científicos a los reguladores para fundamentar los nuevos registros que podrían estar en peligro de perderse por motivos políticos en lugar de por motivos científicos. El endosulfán fue un buen ejemplo de cómo los datos científicos pueden respaldar la longevidad de un producto, dice Dave.
“We will go and fight if regulatory facts are not true,” he says. “We will have funds to fight bad data, just like CropLife, which is the only association right now that has the means to do so.”
Dave says just like with the endosulfan example, international regulators — specifically at the WHO and FAO — often change their minds about the safety of actives depending on what information is presented to them. Dave hopes PMFAI will help ensure that data is based on science, not politics or marketing, and therefore will help harbor prosperity for more generations of Indian agrochemical producers for years to come.
“We have to ensure that everyone survives in this business and that the data is driven by experts,” he says, “and that is what we intend to safeguard, for our industry and for the farmers. When Bayer held the patent on imidacloprid, it was $70 per liter. Now it is about $12 per liter; now tell me, who does that help?”