Tips for Start-ups in Herbal or Ayurvedic Medicines
While delivering a lecture in a webinar on “Startup and Entrepreneurial Scope in Ayurvedic and Herbal products” in Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, I faced a few questions on how to start manufacturing unit by a Garduate in Botany, of course supported by A few teachers. Herewith I am providing you a few tips.
As most of the aspirants do not have large amount of money to invest in setting up a factory having GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) facilities and expert man power and labour (To manage labourers is another big issue) one can go for either Loan licensing or Third Party manufacturing.
Loan licensing is when you will rent a particular space and machinery in another well-established manufacturer for manufacturing your own brand name products. In that case, marketed by and manufactured by name will be your own company with manufacturing address detail of hired manufacturing unit.
In Third Party manufacturing, you will enter into an agreement with another very reliable manufacturing company for manufacturing product with your brand name and company name. Manufacturer will produce the medicine under their own name and will supply to you in ready to sell form. You will be only marketing the product under your name. In this case you will have to share all the “secrets” of your medicine with them. This is comparatively easy process and need very less documentation and formalities. Here the manufacturer’s name and address will be mentioned.
Other necessary steps from your part are the following:
1. First step will be making a formulation i.e. a medicinal preparation. This can be done by:
a. Selecting a disease; say diabetes, acidity etc.
b. Selecting the component plants you want to keep in formulation. It is better you select the best plants available. Select plants having a lot of Clinical research data or ethnobotanical data. They should be freely available in market and affordable to pocket. You may keep all component plants in equal proportions if all of them are having excellent activity. But if some are better than others, keep the best plants as major components. Do not use plants having little or no activity. The more plants you add, the percentage of individual plants will be coming down. Once all these matters are decided you can go for Loan Licensing or Third party manufacturing.
Other important points to produce a quality product are:
1. You will have to ensure that the raw material (plants) are correct.You can check it by morphological, pharmacognostic or phytochemical characters.
2. Extract the plants with deionised water by at least 2 repeated extractions of materials with fresh water.
3. If the plant contains water insoluble components, extract them with Isopropyl alcohol.
4. Add biocatalysts/bioenhancers like pepper.
5. If possible, add a few antioxidants.
Marketing is more important and difficult than manufacturing. Please make sure that you have the facilities for selling your product. If you cannot sell your product, your dreams will be shattered.
Mammen Daniel
