India's Patriarch

Pradip Dave has nurtured a generation of exporters, and he continues to foster opportunities for generic producers.

By David Frabotta
Editor
October 2009

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.

All Business

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.

But Pradip changed that. Recognizing the diverse opportunities of BCPC, Dave began bringing larger delegations from throughout India. He began promoting the event throughout the country, and BCPC, in turn, helped numerous Indian companies earn international publicity.

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 is another company that has been supported by Dave. Rotam India Director Rajiv Pandit says Dave was always eager to encourage companies to do more business abroad, and he was a leading organizer for industry events and promotional opportunities to better acquaint the world with the Indian agrochemical industry.

“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.”

And like any good mentor, he followed his own advice. Dave began his career working for his family trading business beginning in the 1960s. He eventually went on to found Mumbai-based Aimco Pesticides in 1990 on the strength of branded insecticides, herbicides and fungicides. He now serves as chairman of the public company with revenues of about $30 million for the trailing 12 months ending March 31. The company now also manufactures various technical-grade pesticides, some of the key products being chlorpyrifos, temephos, cypermethrin, permethrin, hexaconazole, glyphosate, triclopyr and fluroxypyr in a range of formulations, including liquids, wettable powders, dusting powders, suspension concentrates and dry flowables.

And although he has run and launched profitable businesses, his true claim to prestige in India has been as the preeminent advocate for Indian pesticide exports around the globe. And his pursuits have landed him at numerous organizations, some of which he started to fit the needs of the industry if they did not already exist.

Association Nation

In addition to being president of the largest pesticides manufacturers and formulators association in the country, Dave is also a founding member of the governing body of Chemtech Foundation; vice chairman of the Basic Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals & Cosmetics Export Council, and chairman of the Society of Chemical Industry, India, with its headquarters in London, UK.

Dave has led PMFAI for 20 years, taking the organization from just a few dozen members when he took the helm to more than 350 today. PMFAI promotes the safe and judicious use of agrochemicals, and its members include multinationals, basic manufacturers of all sizes, manufacturers of intermediates required for pesticides, as well as consultants, ancillary manufacturers, trade associations and individuals.

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.

In 2007, after more than four years of testimonies and debate, the Department of Chemicals & Petrochemicals declined to grant data exclusivity for agrochemicals.

“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 has positioned PMFAI as an expert organization for regulators, a necessary function to protect the longevity of generic producers and their ability to control their livelihood as regulators take aim on legacy actives in favor of newer chemistries. And now he is taking that concept global, with a little help from other associations.

PMFAI is a founding partner of AgroCare, which was incorporated in Brussels last year to help generate data and testify to international regulatory agencies when questions arise about the sustainability of chemicals that come off patent. Along with PMFAI, the other founders of AgroCare are the Latin America Agrochemical Association (ALINA), a federation of 27 countries; the European Crop Care Association (ECCA), which represents companies in 11 countries; and the China Crop Protection Industry Association.

AgroCare pools resources of these organizations to provide scientific data to regulators to substantiate re-registrations that might be in jeopardy of being lost based on political grounds instead of scientific grounds. Endosulfan was a good example of how scientific data can support the longevity of a product, says 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?”