Pharma Services Network has been selling the value of foreign pharmaceutical businesses to U.S. drug companies for years. But the prominent rise of India in the pharma sector has prompted them to launch a new service entirely focused on the country.

Charlotte, N.C.-based Pharma Services has recently unveiled a new clinical research service, dubbed PharmaTours, which is designed to help pharmaceutical companies get firsthand experience seeing Indian contract research organizations, contract research and management vendors, as well as chemistry, manufacturing and control testing firms. Pharma Services believes that a week of visiting such Indian businesses will go a long way toward instilling confidence in foreign companies looking to save money by working with India, but are concerned about their unfamiliarity with the country.

Jim Worrell, CEO and founder of Pharma Services, said PharmaTours targets two main markets – companies that have a very specific drug development need and are looking for a facility that can handle it, as well as companies that are skeptical about outsourcing work to India and want an overview of what the country’s pharma sector has to offer.

“[PharmaTours] can help companies choose from four to five contract research organizations that meet a specific need,” said Worrell.

“Or it is designed for companies that just want to learn more,” he added. “At a trade show they can tell you whatever they want. When you are on a tour in their facility you get the truth.”

Jim’s brother Steve Worrell, Pharma Services executive vice president, said PharmaTours makes perfect sense for the majority of U.S. pharma CEOs who are preaching cutting costs, but want to see foreign outsourcing options first hand. “They have heard all the reasons India is a good opportunity. They just haven’t done it yet,” he said.

The plan is to specifically tailor the tours to fit the types of companies that are interested. So Pharma Services might send one more overview based tour at one time and a more specific need based tour at another. Envisioned as sending monthly tours, Pharma Services Network will begin sending tours once or twice a quarter, with the first tour slated for mid-May.

According to Pharma Services, each tour will include a handful of interested businesses, a Pharma Services-hired executive consultant who has experience doing business with India’s drug industry, a U.S.-based travel director and a representative from an Indian destination management company.

Pharma Services wants to keep the tour numbers small, which the company believes will make for a better business value. “The intent is to give a really high-quality experience to the pharmaceutical executives that are going over there,” said Steve Worrell.

Still, Pharma Services is not trying to sugar coat India and knows there are still issues to be faced when doing drug development there. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has even recently pulled drugs off the market because of manufacturing trouble in India and many pharma businesses have been very skeptical in the past about the validity of clinical trial data in India due to unreliable patient data and paperwork.

“All of these things led to an uneasiness about doing business in India,” Jim Worrell said. “And we are hoping to get [companies’] feet on the ground, so to speak, and distilling some of these fears.”

Worrell points out that the FDA opened three offices in India in 2009 and is taken a very active approach in the country.

For its part, Pharma Services is working to make sure the organizations it is highlighting meet the high standards of American pharma businesses and conform to FDA regulations. “The companies that are on our PharmaTours have been carefully selected based on their quality and ability to meet FDA standards,” Worrell said.

PharmaTours was just announced in late February and the company said it has been well received. “The reception has been very good, but it has been a bit spread out. Some want to go now and some want to go later,” said Worrell. “We are just trying to serve the market.”

Organizations such as the Washington-based U.S.-India Business Council are also on board to help pump up the Indian pharmaceutical business.

Last summer the council released a report about the impact of “incremental pharmaceutical innovations on the economies of developed and developing nations” and called for the Indian government to reform legislation that impacts such innovation. The report identifies a broad range of potential benefits of pharmaceutical innovation for India.

Started in 2003, Pharma Services’ brain trust includes Jim and Steve Worrell, as well as a third brother David Worrell, who serves as the company’s chief technical officer.

Jim Worrell got his first experience with India in the early 1980s working with Indian companies as an IT consultant. He helped one U.S. client manufacture its products in India.

Pharma Services first initial focus, which continues today, was in representing foreign contract research organizations in the United States and drumming up business from the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. One of the company’s early clients was Vimta Labs Ltd. in Hyderabad. In addition to India, Pharma Services has worked for customers in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Germany and Brazil.

Examples of business includes: helping a U.S. biotechnology company decrease the cost of a clinical study by $2 million, finding more than 100 patients for another company’s clinical study all in one center in Eastern Europe and facilitating a partnership between a U.S. organization and a German contract research business.

Pharma Services has very high hopes for PharmaTours and that rests squarely on the shoulders of the potential of the Indian pharma industry.

“India has almost everything going for them: the language, the skill sets, the knowledge, the number of doctors, the number of patients,” Jim Worrell said. “There is still so much potential. There are still so many countries that haven’t gone to India.

“And we think it is just because of a lack of knowledge,” he added. “You can save millions of dollars in the process and often get your work done faster.”

“When we got into the game in 2003 India was just beginning to get on the map with clinical research,” he continued. “We were just lucky. The wind was kind of at out back, as they say.

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