INTRODUCTION: As part of our long-term program to increase our footprint across the world, India presents a good green field opportunity. Globally we have gained some early success with the World Health Organization declaring us a pandemic, the second in this century since SARS.
But we wish to emphasize that compared with SARS our growth trajectory has been steeper - in less than six months we have scaled up our presence in over 180 countries and nearly covered one million people and continue to 'go viral' at a scorching speed. We also had some other notable successes:
- Met all the timelines in the country of our origin - China, and we are on course to soon complete the project life cycle of our largest market.
- Established new hot spots - Italy, Spain and the United States, and that too in a challenging environment of robust healthcare system, advanced medical research, economic prowess and educated populace. They could be our new growth engines once China runs its course.
OBJECTIVE: We intend to turn India into our new growth engine as its population is next only to China. Our long-term goal is to replicate or even improve upon the successes of dengue and H1N1, which have become permanent fixtures in the country.
OPPORTUNITIES: In terms of population density, India offers an even better opportunity than China. It has over 400 people per square kilometre as against China's 150 odd people. In fact, in some urban clusters it is as high as 100,000 per square kilometre. All this makes social distancing an impossible prospect - which we can use to our advantage. In many European and southeast Asian countries we were finding social distancing a major growth hurdle.
Another favourable factor is that a major chunk of the population lacks access to running water. Hence the compliance towards regular hand wash will be poor. We just need to stay put at door handles or ATM keys.
However, the biggest window of opportunity India offers is its healthcare system - which ranges from being patchy to non-existent. Sample these facts: The country has only 0.55 beds per 1,000 population; 100,000 ICU beds for its over a billion people and around 50,000 ventilators, while the requirement could be around one million. Even doctors and nurses dealing with Covid-19 cases have to make do without proper personal protective equipment.
Barring few pockets, the country is banking more on cow urine and other bogus remedies. And many are indulging in diversions like clapping hands and lighting lamps standing on balconies and giving us a communal identity. Some are even living under the smug belief that because they are vegetarians they won't get infected. And the Chinese got it because they eat batty stuff. Having overrun countries with much better healthcare stats and more pro-active governments, India is a compelling low-hanging fruit that should not be missed.
CHALLENGES: The 21-day lockdown across the country may provide fillip to social distancing and flatten the growth curve. But its ad-hoc execution has left many cracks that can be exploited.
India happens to be the largest producer of malarial drug hydroxychloroquine and this had caused serious impediments during the execution of our China project.
Lastly, the world is racing towards developing a vaccine. Though it will take some time, but we cannot afford to be complacent. We need to set in motion our mutation plans so that we are not overwhelmed by vaccines.
