Why One New Drug Takes Ten Years To Make | Mankind x Dr. Reddy's | WTF is Pharma?

I got two of the biggest names in Indian pharma into one room, Rajeev Juneja of Mankind and GV Prasad of Dr. Reddy's, who'd somehow never actually met before this, and what came out was part masterclass and part origin story, from why being relentlessly contrarian beat following the herd, to how a college dropout from Meerut turned everything he hated about a medical store into a pharma giant, to why a chemical engineer who says he owes his career to his marriage spent decades chasing one original molecule, and somewhere in between we got into why India makes the world's generics instead of discovering its own drugs, what it really takes in time and money to bring a single drug to market, why GV thinks the AI-will-cure-everything story is overstated, where GLP-1s go next, and the one thing they'd tell a 25-year-old trying to build in pharma.Timestamps:00:00 Introduction04:27 Rajeev Juneja's path from medical-store apprentice to building Mankind10:11 Mankind's contrarian OTC and bottom-up market strategy16:23 G.V. Prasad on science and the Dr. Reddy's lineage23:06 Segmenting the industry and how generic drugs are made29:15 Why drug purity standards are shared but enforcement differs36:40 Why India is the pharmacy of the world by volume, not revenue41:00 How margins are split across the pharma value chain45:17 Whether online pharmacy and consumer brands are real openings53:15 Whether hospital roll-up valuations are justified59:10 Tariffs, Jan Aushadhi and drug price controls1:03:21 How China built a pharma-innovation ecosystem in a decade1:10:02 Long-horizon governance and removing entrepreneurial fear1:15:40 China's incentives, talent and leverage over the US1:22:01 Why the Ayush and wellness market outgrows pharma1:25:05 The evidence, quality and standardisation debate around Ayurveda1:35:13 The sexual-wellness opportunity and the stigma problem1:40:26 The fertility, IVF and egg-freezing opportunity1:43:45 The API narrative debate and how a drug is synthesised1:50:54 Biologics, monoclonal antibodies and vaccines explained1:55:57 Stem cells and peptides, separating therapy from hype2:00:06 The semaglutide story and how GLP-1 works2:05:01 Mankind's ethical-selling philosophy on GLP-12:08:06 Why India leads in small molecules but lags in biologics2:15:07 Where a young founder can enter the GLP-1 wave2:23:38 The yin and yang of innovators and generics2:29:05 Diagnostics, CDMO and the China-plus-one opportunity2:37:18 Applying AI to pharma and the expired-medicine problem2:43:01 Why founders should never copy a set formula2:45:30 Succession, home diagnostics and the microfluidics frontier #nikhilkamath Co-founder of Zerodha and Gruhas Host of 'WTF is' & 'People By WTF' Podcast Twitter: https://x.com/nikhilkamathcio/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikhilkamathcio/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhilkamathcio utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_appFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/nikhilkamathcio/Rajeev Juneja-Vice Chairman & Managing Director at Mankind Pharma LtdLinkedIN- https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajeev-juneja-27882a24b/G.V Prasad Reddy-MD & Co-Chairman at Dr. Reddy'sLinkedin-https://www.linkedin.com/in/gvprasadster/Watch 'WTF is' Podcast on Spotify https://tinyurl.com/4nsm4eznWatch 'People by WTF' Podcast on Spotify https://tinyurl.com/yme92c59Watch 'WTF Online' on Spotify https://tinyurl.com/4tjua4th#WTFiswithnikhilkamath #PeopleByWTF #WTFOnline