Through the global supply chain products often change hands repeatedly, perhaps travelling through several countries before reaching their destination. Counterfeits can be introduced at any point along the way. Counterfeiting and fraud are a massive drain in today’s economy.  Today, it has reached deep into various industries like Pharmaceuticals, FMCG, Auto parts, Liquor etc.  There are some breath taking stats which raise eyebrows towards this unnoticed evil which has set deep roots into our economy. Infact, in just ten years the value of international trade in counterfeit and pirated products has risen by more than 80%. And by 2022, counterfeit goods are expected to drain 4.2 trillion dollars from the global economy- putting 5.4 million jobs at risk in the process. Counterfeiters find traditional packaging and the accompanying barcodes often straight-forward to copy and can replicate good enough copies to fool some of the consumers, some of the time. Across all industries, this accounts for multi-billion euro losses and the direction of funds towards criminal organisations.

Whilst the counterfeiters reap the benefits of cheap cloning, they bypass the true costs for the genuine businesses such as their investment in the IPR (intellectual property rights) and the high cost of product development with the duty to consider the health and safety of consumers.

Counterfeit products dilute the value of a brand by offering substandard products in the name of the brand. It is a huge challenge for brand owners to monitor the real-world global situation, to find the fakes and act to remove them from the market and to prevent future cases. For many years various governmental organisations have joined business owners in the fight against counterfeit goods. Smart technology added to packaging at manufacturing is the way to fight the counterfeiters.

Genuine Mark can play a significant role in protecting your brand.  It has undertaken stern anti-counterfeiting packaging methodologies and these anti-counterfeit packaging fetches an extremely high demand to safeguard the authenticity of the products, right from the manufacturer to the consumer. The anti-counterfeit packaging brought up by Genuine Mark is segmented on the basis of technology into security inks and coatings, security printing and graphics, RFID (active tags, semi active tags, passive tags) , hologram and QR codes, mass encoding and others (Electromagnetic, Surveillance technologies). Below are listed some of the anti counterfeiting features that Genuine Mark provides:

Track and trace

Genuine Mark provides serialization of holograms as part of systems that combine authentication with traceability. So-called track-and-trace systems link on-pack security devices with database management and field-tracking services.

In this way, the ability to know where a consignment has been, where it is now and where it is heading has become lucid. This technology has become a fundamental part of many drugs companies’ production and logistical operations. This is particularly important where the ability to identify the source and provenance of products is becoming a mandatory requirement. The techniques and visual effects make it very difficult to copy a properly conceived and executed authentication hologram with 100-percent accuracy.

Product Verification

Genuine Mark app works on providing a unique code to each SKU of the product in the form of QR (Quick Response) code based on blockchain technology. These codes are generated at the back end through the best-in-class algorithm and are random, unpredictable and non-cloneable. Once the unit is coded, it can be verified by the consumers (or any actor in the supply chain) easily by scanning it through smart phone. The back end responds to the query made and verifies/provides details about the product instantly. Apart from the verification, the application can also be utilized to track & trace the Supply Chain and as a promotion & advertisement platform. The system also provides the user analytics and report, which can be utilized for market /consumer analysis.

Counterfeiting has taken a gigantic form in today’s industry and it’s high time we take necessary actions against it. Though, it is near to impossible to prevent counterfeiting of products, implementing smart technologies like Genuine Mark can prevent the counterfeits from flooding the market.