After months of rapid growth that reshaped the Indian pharmaceutical market’s leader board, Mounjaro’s (tirzepatide) dream run hit a speed bump in March when Eli Lilly’s blockbuster weight-loss and diabetes drug posted close to Rs 20-crore drop in sales month-on-month.
Doctors and market experts attribute this to aggressive price cut by rival Novo Nordisk on its competing Ozempic/Wegovy (semaglutide) and the entry of low-cost generics of semaglutide.
Lilly’s India head Winselow Tucker ruled out any immediate price cut to check the slide in market share. “There are currently no generics of Lilly’s molecule tirzepatide. Lilly remains confident in the differentiated benefits of tirzepatide,” he told ET.
Data from market tracker PharmaTrac shows that tirzepatide clocked total sales of Rs 114 crore last month, down from about Rs 135 crore in February.
Sales of semaglutide, on the other hand, rose to Rs 59 crore in March from Rs 48 crore in February.
“Even as Mounjaro dominates the GLP-1 segment…launch of branded generics has made the semaglutide molecule stronger,” said Sheetal Sapale, vice president commercial at PharmaTrac. “Both generics and innovator semaglutide are far more economical than tirzepatide,” she noted.
While Mounjaro costs Rs 13,000 per month for the base dose, the starting price of Novo’s Ozempic and Wegovy is Rs 5,660. Generic semaglutide is available for as low as Rs 1,300 for vials and Rs 1,800 for injectable pens for a month’s supply.
Domestic drug makers such as Torrent, Dr Reddy’s, Zydus, Lupin and Sun Pharma, which rolled out semaglutide generics on March 21, are already showing signs of early sales pick up, with Torrent alone grabbing 3% of the Rs 1,600-crore GLP-1 agonist market within the first 10 days of launch, showed PharmaTrac’s data.
Eli Lilly’s market share fell to 56% from 61% in March while Novo Nordisk held on to its market share of 25%. The latter’s marketing collaborator Cipla saw a minor dip to 10% from 12%.
Some analysts expect semaglutide to dominate the market within the next 12-14 months.
“Probably 80% of the weight loss people will be on semaglutide, 20% will be on Mounjaro,” said Vishal Manchanda, pharma analyst at Systematix Group.
He expects Novo Nordisk to hold about half of the semaglutide market with Indian generics accounting for the rest.
Lilly’s Tucker, though, is confident that its drugs will retain their appeal despite the price difference. He noted that tirzepatide is the only dual GIP/GLP-1 receptor agonist approved so far to treat type-2 diabetes and chronic weight management.
“Its unique mechanism of action and strong clinical evidence clearly distinguish it in a crowded market,” Tucker said. “This differentiation is supported by robust data.”
With a few more aggressive launches expected in April, sales volume of semaglutide is expected to rise 2-3 times, which is typically the case when generics enter before the market stabilises in 3-4 months, said Sapale.
Source : Economictimes
