COVID-19 2nd wave drives Indian pharma growth in April

THE pharma market in India has grown a robust 51.5 per cent in April 2021 driven by a rebound in volume growth and renewed demand for Covid-19 drugs amid the second wave of the pandemic.

The second wave of the Covid-19 outbreak in April had a significant effect on industry volumes. Acute therapy sales, overall, grew a strong 75.2 per cent while chronic and sub-chronic therapies grew 24.2 per cent and 53 per cent respectively.

According to a recent report by Anand Rathi, during the month of April 21, industry volumes grew 34.5 per cent. A blended price hike in April 2021 was of 7 per cent and new drug launches contributed 10 percentage points of the growth. This is in great contrast to the growth in the first five months of FY 2020 that was severely hit by the outbreak of Covid-19.

Interestingly, demand in April mainly came from Covid-19 drugs such as the much in-demand Remdesivir (April sales of Rs 648 million) and favipiravir (Rs 3.7 billion). These drugs saw renewed demand with the outbreak of the second wave of the pandemic.

Among sales, Glenmark’s Fabiflu generated sales of Rs 3.5 billion last month while other brands had muted sales. Similarly, Cipremi from Cipla, Remdac from Cadila and Redyx from Dr Reddy’s saw decent growth due to the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

As per the Anand Rathi report, drug companies in India did well overall as did acute-centric companies and companies with strong anti-Covid-19 brands. Glenmark saw its April sales up by almost 181 per cent, Cipla of 73.5 per cent and Zydus Cadila had a jump in sales by almost 45 per cent. These are some of the companies that benefited from higher anti Covid-19 drug sales.

Besides this, FDC saw a jump of 91.3 per cent, Indoco jump of 76.4 per cent and Alkem seeing a jump of 63.7 per cent were some of the fastest growing pharma companies in April in the country. However, companies such as Natco and AstraZeneca were the only companies that reported a dip in sales in April 2021.

Another interesting trend that was observed among pharma companies in April was that acute therapy sales recovery for pharma firms was stronger than anticipated. Notably, the sales of acute therapy products had borne the maximum brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak initially. The growth, however, has now rebounded in most of these therapies with anti-infectives growing at 134.4 per cent, gastrointestinals that were up by 56.8 per cent, respiratory 49.7 per cent and antimalarials seeing a jump of 32.8 per cent.

Additionally, it was seen that the April month also saw a strong momentum in chronic therapy drugs as the sales of cardiac products was up by 26.9 per cent to generate a sales of Rs 20 billion in April. Other chronic therapy products such as vitamins grew 75.8 per cent and anti-diabetes drugs by 13.1 per cent.

As per experts from Anand Rathi, the current momentum in the Indian pharma market is likely to continue over the next 3 to 4 months. Post that period, volume growth of pharma companies in India is expected to be driven by better access to healthcare products for the masses and timely diagnosis of diseases. Though acute centric drug companies are likely to do better in the near term, the momentum may be short-lived considering the cyclicality of these therapies and dependence on the monsoon.