The strategic plans for 2023

It is anticipated that 2023 will be another prosperous year for the healthcare business as a whole, and the IVD sector in particular, for India.

The tailwinds are going to continue to be increasing awareness on healthcare and preventive diagnosis, availability of technology, adoption of POC testing, which may lead to the explosive expansion of aggregator models and the home collecting of samples. The rise in infections and the appearance of new diseases, extreme environmental reasons leading to more diseases, as well as increase in burden due to lifestyle diseases would raise the overall testing and demand for IVD tests.

The global economy is facing headwinds due to a number of factors, including ongoing war in Europe and other international regional conflicts, shortage of chips and other parts, strengthening US dollar, and related currency exchange rate concerns shall continue to have impact on both domestic and international enterprises.

Agappe is in a pretty good position to capitalize on these leading indications in the coming year, as it did in the past several years, and maintain a robust growth pattern in the higher double-digit range. We have created a strong franchise in the new lab set ups in Tier-III and Tier-IV towns, as well as being backed by mid-sized labs and hospitals in Tier-I and Tier-II cities. This is all thanks to our ethos of producing innovative equipment in India and its timely servicing to reduce downtime for the labs.

We have achieved a healthy equilibrium between the strengths of the sales and service teams and going forward we intend to maintain it in a similar fashion.

Through the utilization of big-throughput clinical chemistry and immunology instruments, we plan to increase our concentration in corporate hospitals as well as regional and national lab chains. The CLIA system that we have recently introduced has already received positive response and its features and benefits are well appreciated by the users aligned to the best-in-class CLIA systems in the market. As a home grown company, Agappe has achieved a significant milestone by domestically manufacturing the CLIA reagents for the very first time in the country. We are currently in the process of broadening the menu, and by the end of the following year, we will have one of the most comprehensive immunology test menus on our CLIA systems.

POC vertical’s first year of operation has been quite successful. We are committed to maintaining our investment in the broadening of our POC product and service offerings.

With the continued growth of our international business, we will have a presence in about 90 countries by the time 2023 is over. We are looking toward expanding into a number of other regions in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, using a hub-and-spoke approach with planned investments to further enhance the Agape footprint in global IVD markets.

In the light of the recent patent that was granted to our Mispa i3 equipment (the Mispa I series already possesses patented UCS technology, several design awards, and is an established leader in protein analysis in India), we are intensifying our research and development efforts, in particular emerging technologies like POC and MDx POC solutions with Make in India focus. To strengthen our focus on Innovation, we intend to improve our learnings in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), data interface for lab customers, internet of things (IoT), and other related fields, by adding new talent in our development projects and new collaborative steps with leading research institutions in the country.

In the year 2023, the greenfield equipment plant will start to operate in a limited capacity. It is not expected that production would reach full volume until the middle of 2024. We are dedicated to reducing our reliance on imported IVD products and making more of them in India for export.

We are interested in prospective add-ons to our product line from entrepreneurs of start-ups, small-, and medium-sized businesses, and technocrats to strengthen our innovation cycle as well as broaden our product portfolio.