Cipla top of the heap in market share

Glaxo says vaccine sales not included.

Cipla has ended GlaxoSmithKline's long reign as the leading player in the Indian pharmaceutical market, according to research agency ORG's statistics. Cipla's market share for the 12-month period ended May 2004 was 5.53 per cent, against Glaxo's 5.52 per cent, as per the report.

Ranbaxy Laboratories was at the third spot with a share of 4.74 per cent, followed by Nicholas Piramal India Ltd with a 4.34 per cent share.

While Glaxo is a global drug company with worldwide sales of £21 billion in 2003, Cipla is a homegrown pharmaceutical firm. It is known to be an aggressive player in the domestic market, and exports medicines to several countries from manufacturing facilities in India.

"This (becoming the market leader) only shows our commitment to the domestic market," Cipla Joint Managing Director Amar Lulla told Business Standard. A Glaxo executive, however, said the company's sales were not fully covered by the ORG statistics as they did not take into account vaccines and hospital sales.

"In both these areas, Glaxo is very strong. For instance, our vaccine portfolio is worth over Rs 100 crore. But these are not included in the ORG data," he added.

Quoting data compiled by IMS (International Medical Statistics), the executive said Glaxo was still the leader with a 6.6 per cent share till April 2004, compared with Cipla's 4.6 per cent. "The difference is that IMS takes into account vaccines as well as institutional sales," he added.

Multinational pharmaceutical companies have not been successful in garnering a large chunk of the Indian market. Industry experts say this is because of the existing patent regime, which gives recognition to only processes and not products.

This has helped Indian companies to reverse engineer bestselling drugs from all over the world and launch them in India. However, this is slated to change once product patents come into force from January 1, 2005.