The domestic pharma market witnessed 22% growth in March, its highest in the last 18 months. For the 12 months ended March, the growth stood at a healthy 16%. In March, GSK Pharmaceuticals, Sun Pharmaceuticals, Alkem Laboratories and Mankind Pharma were some of the companies in the top 10 that showed strong performance with growth exceeding 24%. All the top 20 pharma companies by marketshare registered double-digit growth in March.
A growth of this magnitude for the last month of the fiscal has been dubbed as a surprise by analysts. ?The performance of the domestic pharma market has been bright and strong.
The Indian pharma market keeps on throwing surprises from time to time and the month of March was one such case,? said Hari Natarajan, head, pharma trac, Aiocd Awacs, a pharma market research firm.
For the year to March, the domestic pharma market size touched R62,904 crore. For just March, the market was valued at R5,369 crore. Abbott and Solvay remained market leaders with a share of 5.9%, while Cipla was second with a share of 5.3%. GSK and Sun emerged the third and fourth-largest player respectively with a marginal difference in marketshare. While the former had 4.65% of the Indian pharma pie, the latter had control over 4.6%.
Zydus Cadila, Ranbaxy Laboratories, Alkem, Mankind, Pfizer and Lupin were the other companies among the top 10 players.