Domestic pharma growth numbers continue to be disappointing for March

The latest domestic pharma industry growth numbers released for the month of March 2013 continue to be disappointing for the Indian pharma industry. According to data compiled by PharmaTrac, the industry slowed down to 6% worse than the 7.7% growth witnessed in February and 9.8% in January.

The very low growth of the anti-infective segment has been the major reason for the industry's under-performance. The segment, being the largest category in the Indian pharmaceutical market constituting nearly 18% of the industry revenues, grew by merely 2% worse than the 5% for the month of February and 6.9% growth reported by the segment for the month of January.

Other major categories like cardiac, gastro intestinal, vitamins and respiratory grew between 5.5% and 6% - lower than what they grew in the preceding month of February.

For the month of Mar 2013, amongst the top 10 companies, the Zydus ( Cadila Healthcare group) grew at 18.3%, Sun Pharma at 18% and Lupin has a growth of 16%.