Devices & Diagnostics

Medical device firms go to India to explore burgeoning healthcare market

Minnesota firms were joined by companies nationwide to attend a Medical Trade Mission to India […]

Minnesota firms were joined by companies nationwide to attend a Medical Trade Mission to India March 2-8 to take advantage of a rapidly growing middle-class whose healthcare consumption is increasingly hard to ignore.

The Indian healthcare industry is estimated to be $50 billion and is expected to reach over $75 billion by the end of the year, according to a Department of Commerce memo promoting the mission.

Seventeen companies attended the Medical Fair India trade show and representatives from 14 of those companies traveled to Hyderabad and New Delhi that were also on the itinerary, said September Secrist, an international trade specialist, with the U.S. Commercial Service, part of Commerce.

The companies had the chance to meet Indian government officials, hospital administrators, distributors, physicians and tour hospitals in the three cities.

Two years ago a similar trade mission was organized, Secrist said.

Nationally, companies based in Illinois, Oregon, Tennessee and Michigan took part in the mission.

Four Minnesota companies attended. They were Medtronic; Sole Essentials, an orthopedic shoe insert firm; Medafor, which has developed a plant-based, flowable hemostatic powder technology; and Global Medical Device Sales, a consulting firm advising medical device firms on entering new markets, said Tim Odegarde with the Minnesota Trade Office.

They were joined by the Darrell DeMello, president of ScyFix, who is a native Indian and has done business in India by selling the company’s neurostimulation device to help patients with blindness-related diseases.

DiMello said he was invited to serve as a guide to companies going there for the first time.

“Don’t go there wanting to sell products,” DeMello said he told his colleagues. “Build relationships.

DeMello said that this was an exploratory trip for most of the companies who went to see if the opportunity deserves a second look.

“It gave them a lot of confidence with the next round of market evaluation,” he said.

One company which plans to take a deeper look at the country following the trip is Cleveland-based SPR Therapeutics. The company’s Minnesota-based vice president of market development said that the trip was motivated by the desire to commercialize the company’s neurostimulation device as it awaits CE Mark for sale in Europe. The product is aimed toward survivors of stroke who suffer chronic shoulder pain.

“Our goal was to see whether after a first trip we want to do a deeper dive,” said Mark Stultz. “And the answer is yes.”

 

 

 

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