India, Nov. 1 -- In the early 2000s, a young man from Chapra district in Bihar packed his bags after completing mechanical engineering in Moscow. While many of his batchmates looked toward Europe or returned home, Ashok Kumar Tiwary looked further east - toward a country that many people still struggled to locate on the map: Uzbekistan.

He arrived in Tashkent in 2002 with little more than curiosity and a belief that good-quality medicine at the right price could find a market anywhere. "When I arrived in Uzbekistan, I was immediately struck by the warmth and support I received," he later recalled.

At the time, Uzbekistan's economy was still tightly controlled. Pharmaceutical imports required multiple Government permissions, detailed pri...