Mayaderm: Situation Analysis

Introduction:
Mayaderm is a herbal multipurpose cream which possesses proven therapeutic properties against
many skin ailments and injuries including wounds, ulcers, erythema, herpes, chicken pox,
pemphigus, chronic folliculitis, infected and nodular acne, summer boils, soft tissue infection,
cellulitis and many other ailments for which effective and efficient treatments are not available.
Discovered and developed for commercial production by Dr. C.F. Shah in the year 1998
Mayaderm has been widely appreciated by the dermatologists and surgeon community
throughout the country.
Inspite of the praise and proofs, even until recently, the cream has not been able to gain the
market share that its developer expected it to achieve. Over years, Dr. Shah conducted several
experiments and tests to establish the therapeutic, antibiotic and sterile ability of this cream made
from extracts derived from a creeper Samudra Shosh, but due to his lack of knowledge and
formal education of how the business functions he was unable to take this magic cream to the
advantage of the masses.
Efforts for commercial production:
After conducting experiments and tests, Dr. Shah decided to get the cream produced at a
commercial level and in 1998 Maya Medicines was set up which collaborated with a third party
pharmaceutical manufacturing company, Tuton Pharma to manufacture the product. Maya
Medicines marketed the product in Gujarat through 23 distributors, a stockist and 15 medical
representatives (MR). Inspite of the doctors being convinced easily the MRs resigned from the
company in 2001 for reasons unknown to Dr. Shah. Post this the sales of Mayaderm relied on
word of mouth publicity and the reputation of Dr. Shah in medical fraternity.
Dr. Shah received positive feedbacks from doctors about the effectiveness and multipurpose
nature of Mayaderm.
Dwindling Sales:
In 2012 Dr. Shah signed a contract with Atra Pharmaceuticals for the marketing rights of
Mayaderm to promote it nationally. Atra increased the price of the 25g tube from Rs 70 to Rs

120 and launched the product nationally to a good reception. But in gradual course of time Dr.
Shah noted that the product is not doing as good as he expected. The doctors were prescribing
the cream the cream but the chemists and retailers did not have the stocks to fulfill this demand.
He concluded that this was because of the absence of medical representatives who could make
the retailers maintain a stock of mayaderm.
He believed that there was a huge market for antiseptic and antibiotic ointments and Mayaderm
could have got a net margin of 30% after all costs but it lacked in effective marketing support.
The Way Forward:
The major issue as mentioned as a case fact and as identified by Dr. Shah was that there was an
imbalance between the demand and supply of Mayaderm. The doctors all over the country were
prescribing Mayaderm for various skin ailments and definitely had faith in its therapeutic
abilities. This was driving the demand, but this demand was not matched by the supply because
the retailers and chemists did not have stocks of Mayaderm.
This was primarily due to the absence of medical representatives who could convince the
retailers and chemists to keep required stocks of Mayaderm to meet the excess demand. But no
medical representatives were hired after the mass resignation of 15 medical representatives in
2001 nor was any investigation undertook to understand the reason behind their resignations.
The immediate course of action, therefore, could be one of the below two:
1. Hire new medical representatives with prior experience, offer them appropriate and
competitive incentives based on sales in their respective zones and map them throughout
the country based on demand concentration.
2. Offer good margins to the distributors, retailers and chemists, encouraging them to keep
stocks of Mayaderm, by cutting on company profits in the short term and as the sales

increase in the course of time the margins can be adjusted to volumes.

As the cream is for skin ailment treatment, those areas of the country should be targeted
where certain skin diseases are quite common. A focused study on this will easily reveal

these areas.
In the long term the company could work on building a brand name to compete with the
likes of over-the-counter products including Borolin and Vicco turmeric cream. This

could be done by reinvesting the profits into advertising and diversification to products
like eye and ear drops. This might also need capital infusion by investors which will

definitely come along as the sales and word of mouth publicity go up.
As the sales increase, to cut down on cost in long term the company might also cultivate
the raw material bearing creepers of Argyeria Speciosa and a standardized process may

be set up to prepare the extract from its leaves.

Utilizing its multipurpose nature specialized products might be made in combination
with other herbal constituents to capture specific market segments like burn cream, antiacne cream and cracked heel repair cream. This will help in brand establishment and
brand recognition.

Prepared By: Imran Hussain

Roll No

: 15150

Reg. no. 4146358