Drug Counterfeiting in India Exposes Vulnerability of QR Codes to Cloning

India is currently facing regulatory uncertainty around authentication and traceability regulations. While on one hand it recently amended its Central Goods & Services Tax (CGST) Act to allow for the introduction of tobacco traceability, on the other hand it has rolled back key measures for pharmaceuticals – possibly due to the increasingly widespread copying of genuine QR codes for track and trace onto counterfeit drugs.

14 years after mandating track and trace on pharma exports, India’s Directorate General of Foreign Trade has now withdrawn this mandate. The official reason for the withdrawal is to avoid any duplication with the domestic drug traceability regulation of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, which implemented barcode requirements for 300 domestic drug brands in 2023.

Another reason is related to international compliance, in that most export destinations for Indian-made drugs have their own serialisation requirements for traceability, which are different to India’s.

Therefore it was considered unnecessary and burdensome for exporters to also have to comply with India’s domestic traceability regulations.