The simple average of moving annual total (MAT) unit growth for companies ranked among the top 10 remained between 1.49 per cent and 1.99 per cent from January to August, according to Business Standard calculations. Companies ranked 11th to 20th began the year with average volume growth of around 0.4 per cent, but turned negative in April and remained so through August.
The top 10 in August included Sun Pharma, Cipla, Abbott, Mankind Pharma, Torrent Pharmaceuticals, Alkem Laboratories, Intas Pharmaceuticals, Lupin, Zydus Lifesciences and Dr Reddy’s Laboratories. The next cohort included Macleods, Aristo, Emcure, Glenmark, GSK, USV and Ipca, among others.
MAT, or moving annual total, measures sales over the trailing 12 months.
The divergence comes even as the overall Indian pharmaceutical market (IPM) has strengthened in value terms. MAT value growth accelerated from 8 per cent in January to 10.4 per cent in August.
Cipla has been the strongest volume performer among the leading companies, with MAT unit growth ranging from 7 per cent to 9.6 per cent during January-August. Sun Pharma’s unit growth rose from 3.4 per cent in January to 4.3 per cent in August, while Abbott and Lupin recorded growth of 4 per cent and 3.1 per cent, respectively, in August.
Individual performance varied. Zydus, Dr Reddy’s and Torrent recorded negative MAT unit growth in August. Yet even excluding Cipla, the remaining top nine companies, on an average, recorded positive volume growth in each of the eight months analysed.
The performance comes amid a shift in the domestic market towards chronic and sub-chronic therapies. Sheetal Sapale, vice president-commercial at Pharmarack, said these therapies together accounted for around 56 per cent of the IPM in February, up from 53 per cent in 2022, while acute therapies’ share declined to 44 per cent from 47 per cent. Chronic therapies were growing at an estimated five-year compound annual growth rate of 12 per cent, compared with 6 per cent for acute therapies.
“Changing dynamics of the IPM indicate a strong shift from stable, seasonal demand-driven acute therapies to lifestyle-driven non-communicable diseases that are more chronic and sub-chronic in nature,” Sapale said. She added that acute therapies are largely volume-driven, while chronic and sub-chronic therapies are value-driven and supported by premiumisation.
Veda Halve, AVP, Healthcare, Primus Partners, said larger companies benefited from strong brands, broad portfolios and greater exposure to fast-growing chronic therapies such as cardiac, anti-diabetic, respiratory and CNS.
“Second, the newly opened Semaglutide market was readily occupied by the major players, who had existing GLP-1 manufacturing capability with large-scale sales and distribution forces. This gave the larger pharma companies a huge boost in volume-based growth,” she said.
PharmaTrac’s March data showed Dr Reddy’s, Zydus, Lupin, Sun Pharma and Torrent among companies with semaglutide brands, alongside Emcure, Alkem, USV and Glenmark. By end-March, it was tracking 26 semaglutide brands from 13 companies.
Halve said new launches were another differentiator. As of July, she said, IPM growth was estimated at 12.1 per cent, of which 3.8 per cent came from new product launches. Larger companies also benefited from deeper penetration into Tier-II and Tier-III towns and institutional channels, giving them “multiple independent sources of volume that a narrower portfolio simply does not have”.
The 11–20 cohort in August included Macleods, Aristo, Emcure, Glenmark, GSK, USV, Ipca, Micro Labs, Eris Lifesciences and Alembic Pharmaceuticals. Performance varied sharply: USV, Ipca, Glenmark and Macleods recorded positive MAT unit growth in August, while Emcure and Alembic saw declines. The cohort’s average growth, however, remained negative.
“The 11-20 group is facing a squeeze,” Halve said, arguing that these companies lacked the distribution reach, portfolio breadth and new-product capability of larger companies, while also facing more price-competitive players below them.
“This leaves them exposed at both ends, losing volume to more price-competitive players below them, while also losing prescriber share to larger companies with deeper sales forces and greater resources to build presence in attractive therapy areas,” she added.
The pattern was less uniform further down the rankings. The 21–30 cohort, including Pfizer, La Renon, FDC, Ajanta Pharma, Sanofi India, Corona Remedies, Himalaya, Procter & Gamble, Indoco Remedies and Bayer in August, saw average MAT unit growth fall from 2.4 per cent in January to around zero in August.
Companies ranked 31–40 were weaker as a group, recording negative average MAT unit growth through the January-August period.
