Pharma logs 17% growth in Nov; anti-infective therapy drives market demand

The domestic pharmaceutical market saw its highest growth rate for 2022 in November, at 17.3 per cent, after both volume sales and price growth picked up.

Compared to November 2021, when it had clocked 6.6 per cent growth, the Indian Pharmaceutical Market (IPM) posted robust growth numbers last month as anti-infective therapy drove the market demand.

Volume growth had slowed in the months of February, March, April, and May, indicating that unit sales in the IPM were declining. The overall IPM growth was in negative territory for these four months.

A gradual rebound started in June, but in October again, volume sales declined by 0.9 per cent.

Explaining the trend, Sheetal Sapale, president (marketing) at pharma market research company AWACS, said anti-infective therapy sales were quite high and did not match the seasonal pattern. “If you were to look at the growth drivers for November last year, the volume growth was zero. So, the 17 per cent growth is a result of two things – one is low volume growth in November 2021, and a revival in sales growth after a dip in October 2022,” she said.

Sapale said that apart from anti-infective therapy, no major therapy had shown an aberration in demand. She said a lot of pending surgeries were happening now. “Therefore, in the anti-infective therapy segment, hospital anti-infectives are driving demand,” she added.

Anti-infectives – antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals etc — clocked 15 per cent growth in November.

This therapy is Rs 22,280 crore in size annually. In November alone, Rs 2077 crore worth of anti-infective drugs were sold, compared to Rs 2,075 crore of cardiac drugs, Rs 1,460 crore of anti-diabetic drugs.

Key antibiotic brands like Augmentin (GSK) and Clavam (Alkem) clocked 25 per cent and 29 percent growth, respectively, in November, the data showed.

Anti-diabetic, cardiac, respiratory, vitamins, and gynaecological therapies posted strong double-digit numbers during the month.

Among corporates, Alkem, Aristo, Glenmark, Intas, and Abbott clocked strong growth rates of above 20 percent during the month. Market leader Sun Pharma clocked 15 per cent growth in sales, while Cipla (17 per cent), Zydus (20 per cent) and Mankind (19 per cent) also posted strong growth.

Cipla witnessed 20 per cent volume growth during the month.

Will this growth trend continue? “Typically long-term growth in the domestic market is driven by chronic therapies. The good news is, in the last few months, thanks to patent expiries etc, the chronic therapies of cardiac and antidiabetic have done well. November growth is riding on acute therapy anti-infectives, which may taper in the coming months,” said the cardio-diabetic division head of a Mumbai-based mid-sized firm.