Pharma companies prioritizing technology for growth: ZS CEO
Mint, Pratap Khedkar, chief executive of ZS, said the company reported sustained growth in contrast to the top IT service providers due to resilient tech spending across the pharmaceutical sector. He also spoke about how global pharma giants are prioritising tech investments to grow revenues, over margin expansion, and the distinction bletween artificial intelligence advanced statistics, and process automation. Edited excerpts: How is the downturn in IT affecting ZS? Most of India’s tech majors operate across nearly 50 industries, while ZS focuses only on healthcare.
When macroeconomic fluctuations happen, the healthcare sector remains recession-proof. But, healthcare has its own challenges independent of economic factors, such as replacing the revenue generated by a blockbuster product that moves out of the market. These are up and down cycles, which do affect us.
How are pharma majors maintaining discretionary spending on technology? Digital transformation and tech spending in pharmaceuticals and healthcare are resilient for many factors—one of them is a patent and product expiration slope. In the next five years, products that account for 41% of global sales in pharmaceuticals will expire. As a result, firms are trying to squeeze more returns out of these products by getting these products to more users.
Also, digital insights can increase proliferation of a medical product. Nearly 60% of pharma companies globally are adopting omnichannel orchestration to expand the reach of drugs to physicians and patients. Over time, we are seeing that, doing so, increases the top line by 8-10%, through AI-driven precision-marketing.
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