Competing Through Capabilities

Group Assignment
Case Study: Mankind Pharma

Submitted by
Group 1
Moumita Basak -2019PGPMX021
Jayasekharan Unnikrishnan - 2019PGPMX015
Paresh Kerkar- 2019PGPMX023
Rajani Nair -2019PGPMX025
Rohit Kumar Sinha -2019PGPMX026

16th May 2021

A. Mankind Pharma - take a position on which strategy they are following

1. In the world’s most competitive pharmaceutical market, with over 20,000 pharmaceutical companies
in operation, a single drug could have as many as 200 brands in the open market place. Looking at
such a scenario Mankind Pharma used the Opportunity strategy to go to market and compete with.
2. With the environment being highly dynamic and volatile and driven by various norms and
procedures, Mankind Pharma picked up critical and few strategic nuances for it go to market.
3. As the Indian market is extremely sensitive to prices, Mankind wanted to be a price leader in the
category and market they were in hence their products were really low on prices compared to other
brands for the same drug.
4. Going against the norm Mankind began with outsourcing all production to third parties. This required
basically no capital expenditure and this helped in to keep the prices low (Most companies put up
their own production facilities to keep quality and cost under check)
5. Using the knowledge of market demographics, instead of going for the urban centres Mankind began
in rural and suburban India, which is where 70 per cent of the population of the country resided. This
was like a first mover advantage move for the firm and using the advantage of price for the right
product, this made Mankind capture large market share.
6. For eg anti-bacterial drug, Zenflox, was selling for Rs 40 a tablet (Rs 400 for the mandatory 10-tablet
course) Mankind entered the market with a price which was 70 per cent lower. For one of the largest
prescribed antibiotics, Moxikind CV, prices at 64 per cent less (which is a 20 to 22 per cent share of
the Rs 250-crore market for the drug)
7. With a 5000 member Medical Representative team, driven with incentives – each representative was
able brings in sale of Rs 20 lakh at an average, Mankind was able to make large strides in the market
share.

Change in strategy
8. On the basis of the growth seen by Mankind , they made a change from their Opportunity strategy
approach to Leverage Strategy
9. With the Brand having captured the mind-set and market of being able to make drugs at low price.
Mankind was using this to move itself up from bottom of the value chain , to lifestyle drugs, the
more lucrative segment of the market.
10. The plan was to be competitive in the same manner for lifestyle drugs, to be affordable and cheaper
than the other Market leaders such as Cipla, Ranbaxy etc.
11. To be a significant player, in lifestyle drugs Mankind needed to have its own facilities. The owners
Juneja set up six such units. These are all owned by the Juneja family and not Mankind, which
retained its focus on marketing.
12. They moved 80% of the manufacturing in-house from the earlier approach of outsourcing. This was
the need if they wanted to move up the value chain as due to stringent process and norms, This
move will also help in keeping the price of the drugs on the lower side.
13. The company planned itself moving away from Tier-II and Tier-III markets into the metros where it
was planning to competing head-on with large companies.
14. Also going into international markets which were volume based such as Vietnam, the Philippines and
SriLanka.

Mankind after using the price has a factor in the initial strategy, and going into the rural and suburban
market, used the same knowledge and process to leverage it move it metro cites and to newer
international market.