ADMN417 Assignment 2: Eli Lilly in India: Rethinking the Joint Venture Strategy

Executive summary:
Eli Lilly entered into a joint venture with Ranbaxy in India in 1992. A decade later both must decide whether this relationship remains mutual beneficial. Both companies have enjoyed a strong working relationship with identical value system as well as strong growth.
Ranbaxy has become international and thus needs to concentrate more on generics and growth in US and UK; the joint venture with Eli Lilly no longer seems to be central to Ranbaxy’s current goals. With major changes in India’s regulation and patent protection, Eli Lilly can now enter the Indian market independently and soon would enjoy product patent protection.
Dr. Lorenzo …show more content…

Andrew Mascarenhas was the first joint venture leader from Eli Lilly. His largest challenges were starting the business from scratch, a lack of brand recognition in the market, and dealing with high turnover of the employees. He had to address these issues by working the team 7 days a week, create a marketing strategy, and teaching employees about the code of ethics and Lilly’s values. Chris Shaw was the second joint venture leader and identified that the systems and processes were lacking and required standard operating procedures. Shaw saw that the sales staff needed to be further educated on therapeutics and thus focused sales and marketing activity. India was experiencing rapid changes and Shaw realized and hired a management consulting firm to assist with growth options. Rajiv Gulati was the third joint venture leader and presumably the leader with the most knowledge about both sides of the businesses. His first obstacle was that the JV was understaffed based on the growth of sales and he was required to increase the staff by 150 employees. Gulati also saw the need to have internal staff to handle the medical and regulatory unity to handle product approval processes with the government.
Within 9 years Eli Lilly Ranbaxy became the 46th largest pharmaceutical company in India out of 10,000 with assured continuous profits for