Lupin among top five generic drug companies in US

Drug maker Lupin has become one of the top five generic drug companies operating in the US market in terms of number of prescriptions.

This is a first among Indian generic companies selling drugs in the US, the largest market in the world. A generic drug is one produced and distributed without patent protection.

Lupin is now behind Teva Pharma of Israel, Mylan Labs, Novartis and Watson Pharma. It had an average of a little over 8.4 million prescriptions a month in year between May 2009 and April 2010, said IMS, a global market research agency that tracks drug prescription sales in the US market.

In the previous year, Lupin had moved into the top 10 rankings, at eighth position. Three Indian companies -- Dr Reddy's Laboratories, Zydus Cadila and Aurobindo -- are among the top 15 companies in the US market, at 11, 12 and 13th positions, respectively. Glenmark (rank 18), Ranbaxy Laboratories (20), Sun Pharma (25) and Torrent (26) are the other Indian drug makers among the top 30 players in the US generic business, said the data.

Both Sun Pharma and Ranbaxy have been affected by regulatory issues in the US for the past two years.

The US should continue to be the single largest drug market, with three to six per cent growth annually in the next five years and reaching $360–390 billion in 2014, up from $300 billion in 2009. The global market for pharmaceuticals is expected to grow by nearly $300 billion over the next five years, reaching $1.1 trillion in 2014, said an IMS forecast.

However, the journey further up the ladder will be tough for Lupin, as Watson Pharma, ranked fourth in the list, generates more than double the number of prescriptions for Lupin. Lupin's largest market, the US, had grown by about 38 percent in 2009-10 to Rs 1,789 crore, of a total revenue of Rs 4,740.5 crore. In March and April this year, Lupin had over a million prescriptions in the US market.

"We are happy that we could achieve our target of breaking into the top five position a few years before we targeted to reach that milestone. We could achieve it in just five years, in a market dominated by players like Teva and Mylan which are there for the last two decades,” Nilesh Gupta, executive director of Lupin, told Business Standard.

Of 26 products launched in the US market, 13 are at the top position and almost all products are among the top three rankings in that market, he said.

Lupin had filed a record 37 product registration filings and 19 bulk drug or raw material registration filings with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during 2009-10.