A bigger leap
Ravi Speaks:
July 19, 2020-Updated on 20.06.2023.
My Activities With PAU-Ludhiana
Immediately after joining the HQ Ludhiana in March-1982, I started going to Punjab Agricultural University-(PAU) Ludhiana frequently. I had a school friend who had taken the admission there in the Post Graduate The course of Genetics. He used to call me to his hostel since he was also a fresher there in those days. I even used to stay for a couple of days there with him, especially on the occasion of some weekend or some special function in the university.
But my activities attached to this university were especially my official ones which I want to tell here. I was, of course, a Representative at Ludhiana for the Pharma section of Himalaya and was supposed to meet the doctors of the hospitals and the trade, but those days I was given the additional work of meeting the Veterinary doctors as well. The reason for this was the introduction of the veterinary range of products and our company those days was relatively a smaller house with a turnover of around 39 crores. The same Field force was supposed to meet these additional Vet-Doctors and introduce our products for the vet section to them. In the “PAU”-the Veterinary College was a very prestigious institute and students from far off states and even from the other countries used to take the admission there for the BVSc courses.
Those days we had some hot selling products in the human section like Liv52, Cystone, Septilin, etc and we had introduced the Liv52 powder, Cystone powder, etc for the vet section especially. I remember I used to meet the HOD’s of Medicine, Surgery, and other related specialties of the Veterinary College as well. Even today I remember the names of the Professors of that college such as. Dr. D C Nauriyal from Medicine, Dr. Kuldip Mirakhur from Surgery, and so on. These were the people who had become my friends there, and I used to spend time with them. Dr. Mirakhur has now become an authority in Vet sciences based in Chicago after doing his Ph.D. and about Dr. Nauriyal who was in those days the Head of Medicine the latest about him, is not known to me.
Now my job used to meet the doctors of this prestigious College and get two main things from them. One of course -was the prescriptions for the vet section and the other one was even starting the Trials on the animals there since it was a known place and my company was interested to get the trials done from this place and get them published in the journals of repute. I had to work hard at a place where the introduction of my range was to be done, especially with the dominance of the multinational houses which had the established antibiotic ranges for the vet section and they had a long association with them. For us, it was just an extension to our main human side pharma section. After, say, around six months, I realized that there was a special Vet-product movement of my products and distributors had purchased these medicines also regularly. Meanwhile, I had already started there three trials. Two were on the bovines and one was on avian-specially on the chicks-which were to be observed on various parameters during the Hot Humid and Hot Dry spells of Summer. I still remember that during 45*C hot daytime, I used to visit those sheds with the doctor-Dr.SPS Gill and do some markings as per the direction of the doctor, since we were evaluating the anti-stress adaptogenic properties of our brand on those chicks. Even their productivity to give the eggs and their eggshell thickness etc were to be observed and the evaluations on those bases were being done for the brand under trial. The beauty is that all three trials gave very positive responses and were published also in popular veterinary journals. They were reprinted further by our company in our house journals later.
Based on these trials and their publications, these products started moving quick there in Ludhiana. With the coverage of the pharma section, I was regularly covering the Vet section, and I had gone to the leading Hatcheries in Ludhiana. The enormous one was” Northern Hatcheries” and my regular follow-up with them fetched me regular orders for the brand which had just started picking up. Those days I remember I received a congratulatory letter from my head Dr. (Mrs.) R M Captain-who was a lady for procuring the All India Biggest Order for the Cystone-Powder, which was 15 KGs from this “Northern Hatcheries”. These guys were facing the Big E.coli problem in chicks, and their mortality rate was very high and this brand helped them a great deal.
The main purpose of mentioning today about PAU and activities attached to it was to convey that those days the Filed people had the additional responsibility of getting the authentic “Trials” done since there were no Research and Development setups and selling the Veterinary brands besides our main pharma brands. That too in the absence of any vet specialty division. The same Himalaya which is aiming to go even higher this year beyond 3000 crores with many divisions and world Class R&D-having all Good Practices’ Certificates to feed the international market -was that time having only one division and that too making up of around 200-250 people -All India.
We were that time having direct communication for the Vet Section and even for asking for the approval for the initiation of trials-whether the Pilot Trials or even the bigger Double-Blind Cross-to be conducted in the Hospitals etc. with Our head of the Company Operations-Dr. Mrs. R M captain. She, too, used to be very energetic and enthusiastic about these new ventures. We used to be given the prize money of Rs. 30/- per trials report if it was a small one and Rs.50/- for the bigger ones at the Hospital level.
I must have got around 14-15 trials started and with the follow-up myself-even completed. The trial reports were to be bought from the concerned doctors and despatched to the company. Even after this whole process, the main job would be to induce the concerned doctor to send those trial reports to either their specialty journals or even international journals.
When I see nowadays the things happening, I realize that those days the field force had the killer Instinct because they were having the feeling of working for their own company and there was no such feeling that the additional workload was there or the company was putting some additional burden on us. We all had a big desire to do something more for the company and make this even higher and higher. No doubt the present situation of the company is surely made on the strong foundations laid by our old people who were there during the eighties, nineties and even before that period.
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