SMT looks to be among top three stent players in EU

Morgan Stanley and Samara Capital-backed cardiac stent manufacturer Sahajanand Medical Technologies (SMT) is banking on a recent global study, which showed that its Supraflex stents are clinically on a par with Abbott’s Xience stents, to aim for the top spot in the domestic market and also be among the top three players in Europe.

Currently, Surat-based SMT is the No. 2 player in the ~12-20-billion Indian stent market and has a less than 5 per cent share in the global market.

A clinical trial, known as TALENT, had carried out a 1:1 comparisonof ultra-thin, drug -eluting stent Supraflex with Xience family of stents from Abbott across the UK, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria in 23 centres, covering about 1,435 patients.

Ganesh P Sabat, chief executive officer of SMT, said the TALENT study showed that with Supraflex stents, there was a 61 per cent less chance of repeat intervention compared to Abbott’s Xience. “There was a 3.1 per cent chance of revision intervention with Abbott’s Xience while for SMT’s Supraflex it was around 1.2 per cent,” Sabat said. Upbeat about the results, SMT plans to approach clinicians to adopt the India-manufactured stent. It draws more than 60 per cent of its revenues from Tier-II and -III cities. “Now, we can challenge the MNCs even in the cities and top hospitals,” Sabat quipped.

Insiders claim SMT has a market share of 22 per cent or so in the domestic stents market. Abbott is the market leader with a 25-30 per cent market share, and has not lost market share in the past few years. An e-mail sent to Abbott did not elicit a response.