My father kept accounts for the railways in Secunderabad, and I grew up believing that a ledger was a record of things people had actually done. The first time I saw that belief tested was in 1998, as a young audit senior at a bulk-drug manufacturer's year-end. The stock sheets balanced. The solvent-recovery tanks, when we dipped them, did not. Nobody had stolen anything; the plant had simply stopped recording what it recycled. I have been asking to see the tank ever since.
56 per cent US generics, 22 per cent India branded formulations
Finance colleagues led
210
Finance, tax, treasury, investor relations and reporting across five locations
Net debt to EBITDA, March 2026
0.5x
Down from 1.9x in March 2023, during a plant remediation
A generics plant's licence to sell never appears on the balance sheet, so my reporting has to show what we spend to keep it.
I am the chief financial officer of Meruvel Pharmaceuticals Limited, a fictional Hyderabad-based generics manufacturer listed on the NSE and BSE. We earned revenue of ₹4,860 crore in the year to March 2026: 56 per cent from generic medicines sold in the United States, 22 per cent from branded formulations in India, and the rest from emerging markets and active pharmaceutical ingredients. Four plants carry the business: an API unit at Visakhapatnam, two oral-solid units outside Hyderabad that the USFDA inspects, and a formulations unit at Baddi that serves Indian patients.
Most of what decides our results happens away from the finance office: in a quality-control laboratory, on a stockist's shelves in a district town, in a US wholesaler's annual contract round. I have spent twenty-nine years learning to follow the money back to those places. I began as an audit senior with bulk-drug clients in Hyderabad's industrial belt, costed batches on a tablet floor at this same company, built gross-to-net models for a US generics business in Ahmedabad and ran finance for a European group's Indian subsidiary in Mumbai before returning to Meruvel as CFO in July 2020.
Two years after I came back, a USFDA warning letter at one of our oral-solid plants tested every habit I had. We chose a full remediation over a faster, cheaper one, cut the dividend and ran the plant below capacity while the laboratory was rebuilt. That decision still shapes how I see the job. Finance in a generics company exists to protect the conditions under which the company is allowed to sell, and to tell the board plainly, in rupees, what that protection costs.
A warning letter closed without shortcuts
We funded ₹285 crore of remediation at Unit III over two years and accepted about ₹310 crore of forgone revenue while output was held roughly 20 per cent lower. The site was reinspected in March 2024 and classified Voluntary Action Indicated; the letter was closed out in February 2025.
Domestic revenue measured where patients buy
Stockist inventory fell from 46 to 29 days after we ended quarter-end schemes and paid the field force on secondary sales. Primary sales dropped ₹88 crore in one quarter. Expiry returns have since fallen from ₹38 crore to ₹14 crore a year.
A shorter US catalogue with better margins
We exited 23 loss-making US products and gave up ₹164 crore of annual revenue. US gross margin rose from 47 per cent in 2021–22 to 55 per cent in 2025–26, with later approvals contributing alongside the exits.
Debt reduced while the plant was rebuilt
Net debt fell from ₹1,060 crore, 1.9 times EBITDA, in March 2023 to ₹410 crore, 0.5 times, in March 2026, through tighter receivables, less short-dated US stock and deferral of capital spending that protected neither a licence nor a supply line.
Current focus
I am preparing the board's decision on the second phase of our starting-material block at Visakhapatnam, a ₹330 crore question about how much supply concentration we are willing to keep. Alongside it, I am rebuilding plant budgets so that laboratory release capacity is planned as carefully as tablet-press capacity.
Conversations I welcome
I am not looking to leave Meruvel. I would consider one independent directorship at a listed company outside generics, joining the Audit Committee and, after a year of learning the business, chairing it. I can offer about thirty days a year, subject to my board's consent and a conflicts review. I also accept a few speaking invitations from finance and audit-committee audiences.
Beyond the page
The record behind the perspective.
In the boardroom
Meruvel Pharma Inc.Director of the wholly owned US subsidiary, in an executive capacity · 2020–present
Formation
Bachelor of CommerceVelicheti College of Commerce · 1994
Chartered accountant, after articled trainingVedagiri Sundaram & Co. · 1997
Raghav brings the committee the judgement he is least comfortable with first. When the warning letter arrived, his paper set out the provision, the disclosure and the cost to the dividend before any of us asked. I have chaired committees where the CFO managed us. He informs us.
Nandini ParvatikarFictional independent director and Audit Committee chair, Meruvel Pharmaceuticals LimitedThe full record ↗
Contact
I am not looking to leave Meruvel. I would consider one independent directorship at a listed company outside generics, joining the Audit Committee and, after a year of learning the business, chairing it. I can offer about thirty days a year, subject to my board's consent and a conflicts review. I also accept a few speaking invitations from finance and audit-committee audiences.
