CRAMS

Imagine an earlier, broader version of an industry that later split into two more specialised branches as it matured. CRAMS, Contract Research and Manufacturing Services, was that earlier, broader label India's outsourced pharma industry operated under, bundling research and clinical trial support together with contract manufacturing under one term.

CRAMS work included things like helping a global pharma client with early stage drug research, clinical trial management, and process development, alongside actual commercial scale manufacturing, all offered by the same Indian service providers in the industry's earlier years. As India's manufacturing capacity matured and USFDA approved plant capacity expanded, the manufacturing component of this business grew larger and more distinct from the research component, and the industry gradually settled on CDMO as the more precise term for the manufacturing focused half of that original CRAMS business.

You will still encounter CRAMS as a term in older industry reports and in company histories, and it is worth recognising it essentially as the earlier name for what is now more commonly and more precisely described as India's CDMO industry.