Ozone pharma to set up R

Mumbai, Aug 3 (UNI) Leading pharma and consumer healthcare player, Ozone Group, today announced the setting up of a dedicated business division with an investment of Rs 200 million, focusing on research and development, christened as 'Ozone R&D'.

The group will invest the Rs 200 mn over the next two years towards the creation of the new business division, which will serve both the existing Ozone group companies product development needs as well as target the global market for R&D services in the healthcare space.

With a specialty neutral approach, Ozone R&D will target development of new products and processes in allopathic, ayurvedic and natural segments with the ultimate objective of delivering products and solutions which go on to enhance the quality of human life.

The Ozone Group Chairman S C Sehgal said, ''At Ozone, research&development (R&D) has been at the cornerstone of our business strategy. Ozone is credited as the pioneer of the anti-marks skincare segment in India with its 'No-Marks' cream. Since then we have diversified from being a pure pharmaceutical player to a consumer healthcare company leveraging the age old knowledge of herbal and ayurvedic therapies, making us a truly specialty neutral player.'' ''Today we are putting an entire business division in place to accelerate our R&D efforts and develop consumer healthcare products which would be specialty neutral and have a single minded focus.

Ozone group's existing presence in over seven countries across the globe and a subsidiary in the UK will be instrumental in driving this,'' he added.

Ozone R&D would also serve as a prime vehicle for the Ozone group's backward integration plans. To enable this, about 45 acres of land has already been acquired by the group at Sonari, Nagaon district, Assam which has the most conducive climatic conditions for the purpose. This is in addition to 13 acres of land already under cultivation in Gurgaon, Haryana. Plans are afoot to expand the land bank to 100 acres in Assam.

Sehgal said that the biggest bottleneck towards development of natural healthcare products is the availability of genuine, unadulterated herbs and medicinal extracts. Therefore, the group has decided to invest in undertaking organic cultivation of such herbs and ayurvedic plants to meet existing quality standards.

Ozone Group comprises of two operating companies, Ozone Pharmaceuticals Ltd, a formulation based drug manufacturing and marketing company and Ozone Ayurvedics, a privately held Consumer Healthcare entity, which has produced brands such as Nomarks and Kwik.

UNI