Customer Relationship Management initiatives in Pharmaceutical Industry in India: The Newer and emerging trends of CRM & their impact

Pharmaceutical industry in India is one of the fastest growing industries in the country today, growing with an average CGAR of 8.5% with an approx. market size of approx. 2 trillion. The relevance of the Indian Pharmaceutical industry can be measured by the fact that today India is considered as the Pharmacy of the World. However, the industry is now experiencing a rapid change because of the changing scenario in the field of Pharmaceutical Marketing. The dependence of marketing strategies on Key Opinion leaders or decision maker Doctors had given rise to newer trends of marketing strategies to win over the confidence of KOLs. In the current scenario the most important tool which Pharma companies use to retain their KOLs is Customer Relationship management initiatives. Although Indian Pharmaceutical companies are practicing these CRM based marketing since last 2-3 decades or so, there seems a huge paradigm shift from traditional mode of customer relationship management (CRM) to the highly advanced and intuitive means of CRM initiatives, which are in practice now a days. This paradigm shift which was happening at a steady pace, have been hastened due to the sudden emergence of Covid-19. This paper tries to explore these changing trends of CRM marketing strategies adapted by the Indian Pharmaceutical industry, in the field of pharmaceutical marketing in India & the extent of their impact on medical practitioners in India, for whom they are designed.