MUMBAI: The domestic pharmaceutical market delivered a robust growth of nearly 18% in August, buoyed by sales of acute therapies. The acute medication grew around 17% year-on-year (YoY) in August on a low base, while chronic therapies rose about 12.5% YoY, India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) said.
After the normalisation of the high growth this year in the months of April (51.5%) and May (47.8%) led by the lockdown-related lower base last year and higher volume growth, the average Indian pharma market (IPM) growth from June to August 2021 stood at 15.2% YoY. In terms of growth drivers, price, new product launches and volume stood at 9%, 5.9% and 2.9% YoY, respectively, which led to an overall IPM size of Rs 1.63 lakh crore in August (July was Rs 1.61 lakh crore). The market had posted a growth of nearly 14% in July.
Acute therapies including anti-infectives reported a growth of nearly 17 YoY (June and July was over 20% each YoY), while chronic and sub-chronic therapy reported stable growth at 10.8% YoY (6.4% YoY; 7.8% YoY) and 15.3% YoY (11.3%; 11.2%), respectively, in August 2021. During FY21, Ind-Ra said the acute therapy segment reported negative growth on account of Covid, while the chronic therapy segment reported average growth of 7% in the same period.
The contribution of top five therapies to the IPM stood at 58%. These include cardiac (chronic; 13.2% of IPM), anti-infectives (acute; 14.3%), gastro-intestinal (acute; 11.5%), anti-diabetic (chronic; 9.5%) and vitamins (acute; 9.2%).
