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Vipin V Nair

New Delhi , Nov. 10

WHEN sales representatives of a large pharmaceutical company span out in New Jersey in the US, they carry a call plan that lists the names of doctors who are most likely to prescribe their products.

Little would they know that a team sitting thousands of miles away in Gurgaon have already analysed the doctors' profiles, their prescription history and loads of other market data to prepare the plan.

The team belongs to marketRx, a start-up. Don't mistake marketRx for just another business process outsourcing (BPO) company that services clients by employing graduates who learned to speak in a "neutralised accent."

"We are into knowledge process outsourcing (KPO), says Mr Subinder Khurana, President of marketRx. The company employs just about 25 people; most of them armed with degrees from premier institutes such as IIT and IIM.

"We provide high-end knowledge services to global pharma companies through offshore," Mr Khurana told Business Line. He believes that the business of KPO is today at where the BPO was three years ago.

There are no estimates on the potential size of the KPO market, but consulting alone is worth $140 billion annually. "Even if a small percentage of this can be outsourced, it runs into billions," Mr Khurana points out.

Some companies such as GE, Amex and McKinsey have already started out are planning to outsource such work to India.

Compared to other BPO firms, marketRx charges a much higher rate from its clients; some of the clients are Bristol Myers, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly.

"The revenue per employee is at least 10 times more than that in a normal BPO company," Mr Khurana says. Unlike the per-hour billing of other BPO firms, marketRx charges for each project it executes.

The services offered by marketRx are for product and sales managers in a pharma company. After analysing data such as market conditions, competition, regulations, patent laws and millions of previous prescription by doctors, analysts at marketRx would advise clients on appropriate marketing budgets, size of sales team and doctors who would prescribe their medicines.

"In the US, each time a sales rep goes to a doctor, it costs $150. So they have to generate business worth more than $150 or at least that amount," he said, adding that the seven lakh doctors in the US prescribe medicines worth $150 billion every year.

The four-year-old parent company of marketRx is based in the US. The company has about 90 people in the US and makes about $15 million a year, servicing 15 clients.

In the coming days, the Indian unit would focus on markets in the Europe, Japan and Australia. In the third round of venture capital funding, the company received $10.25 million from West Bridge Capital and this would be used to beef up marketing activities in these geographies.

Over the next 12 months, marketRx plans to have about 100 people in India.

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KPO - the next wave to BPO: High-end knowledge services in keen demand

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