Novartis Eyes Market Potential Outside Biggest Chinese Cities

(Davos, Switzerland) — Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG is looking to the vast Chinese market outside the biggest cities like Beijing and Shanghai to drive future business growth in the world’s most populous country, said Marie-France Tschudin, president of Innovative Medicines International and chief commercial officer of Novartis.

“We started really focusing on our county strategy, going to tier two and tier three cities,” Tschudin told Caixin during the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos. The strategic shift is partly driven by the pandemic, which underscored the unmet health-care needs in many smaller Chinese cities as people had to travel to big cities for treatment, according to Tschudin.