Mumbai: Piramal Healthcare, an innovation led company, has agreed to acquire Decision Resources Group (DRG) a US-based company in the healthcare information segment, from Providence Equity Partners for a consideration of approximately $635 million (~Rs. 3,400 crores).

Decision Resources Group provides high-quality, web-enabled research, predictive analytics via proprietary databases and consulting services to the global healthcare industry. With 20 percent CAGR for the last five years, it is one of the fastest growing companies in the $5.7 billion global healthcare information industry. DRG projects revenues of $160 million for 2012. Fourty eight of the top 50 global pharmaceutical companies are its customers and it has an overall customer retention rate of 95 percent.

DRG is focused on three market segments; the Biopharma business unit provides reports, databases and advisory services on drug utilization trends and forecasting in a variety of therapeutic areas; the Market Access business provides database and analytical services that healthcare companies use to assess the current and future opportunity of their products' acceptance into a market; and the Medical Technology business provides actionable insights and data on the medical device markets. DRG's products include detailed market assessments based on a specialized network of over 125,000 healthcare professionals (primarily physicians), proprietary databases of market information and detailed analytical reports on specific therapeutic areas.

The three market segments that DRG covers are worth approximately $2.5 billion, leaving considerable room for DRG to continue to grow its revenues.
After the sale of its healthcare solutions business to Abbott Laboratories in May 2010 for $3.8 billion, Piramal Healthcare has embarked on a strategy to acquire global growth businesses with sustainable returns.

Commenting on the DRG acquisition, Mr Ajay Piramal, chairman of Piramal Healthcare said, "The global healthcare industry is facing several challenges including rising research costs, lower drug approval rates, mounting regulatory pressures and increasingly complex reimbursement models. The need for specialist information is critical and the demand is growing. DRG's portfolio of products is widely regarded as the gold standard of information."