Turning supply-chain blindspots into new value for patients in India
Mapped patient-journey gaps and supply-side opportunity spaces
The challenge
A global pharma major operating across multiple top markets wanted to find innovative ways to serve domestic patient needs in India — and, in parallel, to surface optimisations and efficiencies hidden inside its local supply chain. The two sides of the problem were usually looked at separately. The harder question was whether looking at them together, through a behavioral lens, could reveal opportunities that neither a pure supply-chain nor a pure patient-experience view would catch on its own.
Our approach
We worked alongside the customer's in-house innovation team, extending ongoing patient research in India with primary fieldwork on both the demand and supply sides of the medical value chain. Behavioral economics and behavior design frames sharpened the lens on decision-making, habit formation and medication adherence, while a parallel track examined incentives, relationships, data flows and frictions between key supply-side participants. Immersive ethnography drove insight generation and early solution finding, with concepts then validated with divisional stakeholders inside the customer organisation — keeping the work close to the people who would eventually have to act on it.
The result
The work produced an in-depth picture of the Indian retail patient journey — from prescription through adherence to health outcomes — and a much sharper view of where the experience was quietly breaking down. On the supply side, it surfaced blindspots, pockets of efficiency, and fragmentation in data-driven processes that could be turned into concrete opportunity spaces: new ways to create value for patients at retail touchpoints and in the domestic contexts where they actually take their medication and build loyalty to the brand. The roadmap from there belonged to the customer; we were glad to have helped enable a clearer view of where to point it.
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