Diabetes drugs post fastest sales growth

NEW DELHI: Sales growth of diabetes medicines has accelerated the fastest among all drugs sold in the country as pharma companies pushed their products to tap over 50 million people suffering from the lifestyle disease in India, making it the single largest home for diabetics in the world.

Oral anti-diabetes segment grew 29.7% for the nine-month period ended August 2010 over the year ago period compared with 22.9% increase in the same period last year. The growth of insulins accelerated about five times to 28%, as per research firm IMS Health Information and Consulting Services India.

This was much higher than the 20% growth in the overall Rs 43,000 crore local drug retail markets in the same period that made it one of the fastest growing drug markets in the world.

“An analysis of the product trend in the insulins market showed that a major component of the growth has resulted from volume increase of existing leading brands. New launches in 2009 have also contributed to this growth,” Sameer Savkur, MD at IMS India said.

The total anti-diabetes drug market is estimated to be around Rs 2,600 crore, 70% comprising oral medication.
Sales of some of the top selling anti-diabetes brands grew much faster than the industry.

Sanofi Aventis’ Lantus ranked 50th among all medicine brands in the highly fragmented local market, grew 57.9%, the highest among the top 50 brands, as per IMS data. Sales of rival MSD’s Januvia, ranked 110th among all medicines sold in the country, rose a whopping 111.4%. Abbott’s insulin brand Human Mixtard, the fifth largest medicine brand in the country grew 30.9%.

In comparison, the country’s top two selling drug brands, Pfizer’s Corex and Abbott’s Phensedyl, both cough syrups, grew 23.5% and 11.3%, respectively, during the nine-month period ended August 2010. Last year also, oral diabetes segment had posted the highest growth across all key segments, marginally ahead of antibiotics segment. But overall growth for diabetes drugs was modest as sales of insulins grew just 5.3%.

Sanjiv Navangul, business unit director (chronic care, critical care & disease management) at MSD India said: “More diabetic patients are coming for therapy and compliance to medication has increased due to new marketing strategy and awareness.” Companies have also penetrated markets in small towns and rural areas, he said.

Muralidharan Nair, partner (life sciences) at consultancy firm Ernst & Young estimates about half of the country’s diabetes population is yet to be diagnosed. With global firms such as Abbott, Pfizer, Sanofi Aventis and MSD pushing their drugs to the hitherto neglected smaller towns to tap newer markets, the potential in the segment is immense. ”Companies are trying to tap the undetected segment of diabetic population,” Mr Nair said.

Around 4% of the Indian population is suffering from the disease, making it the diabetes capital of the world. The spurt in sales from medicines to treat diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular, and anti-psychotics is increasing the revenues from the segment also known as chronic segment.

The market share of drugs for treatment of chronic diseases has gradually increased, accounting for 27% now, from about 20% a few years ago. In developed markets, chronic segment accounts for two-thirds of the total market reflecting the predominance of lifestyle diseases with economic prosperity.