Wake up, Neo. There’s a glitch in the pharma matrix

<p>The next time you pick up a strip of tablets at your neighbourhood pharmacy, consider this: the drug you just bought for Rs 170 may have left the factory for Rs 14. That's a markup of over a 1000%. And, it's completely legal.</p><p>In this piece, <a href="https://the-ken.com"><em>The Ken's</em></a> Mutasim Khan traces how India's drug pricing system works, and why the pharmacist, the doctor, and the manufacturer are all optimising for something, while the patient simply pays.</p><p><em>This is a read aloud of Mutasim's original story, by Snigdha Sharma, on Daybreak.<br /></em><br /></p><p>📖 Read the full story on The Ken: <a href="https://the-ken.com/newsletter/make-india-competitive-again/wake-up-neo-theres-a-glitch-in-the-pharma-matrix/">Wake up, Neo. There’s a glitch in the pharma matrix</a></p><p><strong><em>Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. </em></strong><a href="https://the-ken.com/pricing/"><strong><em>Subscribe</em></strong></a><strong><em> for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.</em></strong></p>