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.
所有业务
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.
但普拉迪普改变了这一点。认识到 BCPC 的各种机会，戴夫开始从印度各地带来更大的代表团。他开始在全国推广该活动，而 BCPC 反过来又帮助众多印度公司赢得了国际知名度。
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].”
龙灯印度是另一家得到戴夫支持的公司。龙灯印度董事 Rajiv Pandit 表示，Dave 一直渴望鼓励公司在海外开展更多业务，他是行业活动和促销机会的主要组织者，旨在让世界更好地了解印度农化行业。
“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.”
和任何优秀的导师一样，他听从了自己的建议。戴夫 (Dave) 从 1960 年代开始从事他的家族贸易业务，开始了他的职业生涯。他最终在 1990 年凭借品牌杀虫剂、除草剂和杀菌剂的优势创立了总部位于孟买的 Aimco Pesticides。他现在担任这家上市公司的董事长，截至 3 月 31 日的过去 12 个月的收入约为 $30 百万。该公司现在还生产各种工业级农药，其中一些主要产品是毒死蜱、双硫磷、氯氰菊酯、氯菊酯、己唑醇、草甘膦、绿草定和氟草烟的一系列制剂，包括液体、可湿性粉剂、撒粉剂、悬浮浓缩剂和干燥的可流动剂。
尽管他经营并创办了盈利的企业，但他在印度真正享有声望的是作为印度农药出口到全球的杰出倡导者。他的追求使他在众多组织中脱颖而出，其中一些他开始满足行业的需求，如果它们还不存在的话。
协会国家
除了担任该国最大的农药制造商和配方设计师协会的主席外，Dave 还是 Chemtech 基金会管理机构的创始成员；基础化学品、药品和化妆品出口委员会副主席，以及总部位于英国伦敦的印度化学工业协会主席。
Dave 领导 PMFAI 已有 20 年，带领该组织从他掌舵时的几十名成员发展到如今的 350 多名成员。 PMFAI 促进安全和明智地使用农用化学品，其成员包括跨国公司、各种规模的基础制造商、农药所需中间体的制造商，以及顾问、辅助制造商、贸易协会和个人。
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.
2007 年，经过四年多的证词和辩论，化学和石化部拒绝授予农用化学品数据独占权。
“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 将 PMFAI 定位为监管机构的专家组织，这是保护仿制药生产商的寿命及其控制生计能力的必要职能，因为监管机构将目标对准了传统活性物质，转而支持更新的化学物质。现在，在其他协会的帮助下，他正在将这个概念推广到全球。
PMFAI 是 AgroCare 的创始合伙人，该公司去年在布鲁塞尔成立，旨在帮助生成数据，并在出现有关专利到期化学品的可持续性问题时向国际监管机构作证。与 PMFAI 一起，AgroCare 的其他创始人是拉丁美洲农化协会 (ALINA)，这是一个由 27 个国家组成的联合会；欧洲作物护理协会 (ECCA)，代表 11 个国家的公司；中国植保行业协会。
AgroCare 汇集了这些组织的资源，为监管机构提供科学数据，以证实可能因政治原因而不是科学原因而面临丢失风险的重新注册。戴夫说，硫丹是科学数据如何支持产品寿命的一个很好的例子。
“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?”