Indegene bolsters life sciences marketing business with CultHealth buyout

Life sciences commercialization supporter Indegene is beefing up its drug marketing capabilities through an acquisition.

Bangalore-based Indegene will acquire CultHealth, a full-service healthcare marketing agency. The deal will boost Indegene’s clientele, expand its brand and marketing capabilities, and increase its patient engagement platforms, the company said.

U.S.-based CultHealth has significant experience in medical strategy, creative and omnichannel planning services. The company employs direct-to-consumer strategies while maintaining an insight into drug mechanism of action when building creative campaigns.

The acquisition comes at a time when business and the regulatory environment for medical and healthcare products and services are increasingly complicated. Commercialization service providers like Indegene are seeking out marketing expertise as they explore data-driven ways to launch successful campaigns and omnichannel engagement to physicians and patients.

“Life sciences companies are increasingly demanding a broad, integrated service offering from an integrated, expert set of service providers/agencies,” Indegene’s senior vice president Nancy Phelan told Fierce Pharma Marketing. “They want access to resources with deep medical expertise, combined with creative brand and market development services, in a globally scalable model.”

Phelan said that the CultHealth and Indegene combination addresses this exact need by creating a one-stop shop for clients, from brand and market development through commercialization.

Specifically, CultHealth brings to the table capabilities in medical strategy, creative and omnichannel planning services as well as experience in creating DTC campaigns. And Indegene provides CultHealth access to a larger client pool, a global operations infrastructure, technological expertise and an adjacent suite of commercialization services and leading operations enablement capabilities.

Drug commercialization services could be in high demand. According to a study by IQVIA, life sciences companies in the top 10 countries are expected to launch between 290 and 315 products from 2022 through 2026, accounting for $196 billion in forecasted sales.

“Existing go-to-market (GTM) models pose many challenges—reduced face-to-face interactions, changing customer preferences and limited access to patients,” Phelan said. “Customers are seeking deep brand and marketing strategy expertise and an ability to create compelling new markets and innovative brands and campaigns.

“With hybrid emerging as the preferred GTM model, success requires new thinking on shaping markets and building brands as well as deep domain knowledge along with expertise in customer experience, digital transformation and agile ways of working.”