Indian pharmaceutical market’s (IPM) growth recovered impressively to 14.5% YoY in November from 5.1% YoY in the previous month. The improvement can be partly ascribed to a low base of past year (Nov’18: +7% YoY) and a revival in volumes (+5.9% YoY v/s 2.7% and 3.5% in the prior two months). Price growth further improved to 5.7% and new launch growth came in at 3% YoY.

Growth stood at 10.4% YoY for the quarter ended Nov’19, led by price (+5.5%) and new launch (+2.7%). Volume growth for the quarter was relatively low at 2.2% YoY due to the dismal momentum in Sept-Oct’19. Notably, NLEM and non-NLEM products grew 11.2% and 10.4% YoY, respectively. On a MAT basis, industry growth stood at 9.8% YoY with price growth of 5.3% and new launch growth of 2.6% YoY.

In value terms, NLEM (~10% of IPM) secondary sales grew by 15.2% YoY and non-NLEM (~86% of IPM) by 14.6% YoY in Nov’19. Volume growth for non-NLEM products was 5.5% YoY in Nov’19. Growth in NLEM products was driven by volumes (+9.6% YoY) and prices (+4.7% YoY).

In Nov’19, Dr. Reddy’s (+28% YoY), JB Chemicals (+26.6% YoY) and Emcure (+23.6% YoY) delivered the highest growth. Dr. Reddy’s performance was driven by strong double-digit growth in its top therapies, especially in gastro-intestinal/derma (+31.2%/+37.9 YoY). JB Chemicals gained from strong growth in cardiac (+39.1% YoY). Emcure witnessed good traction in price (+5.8%) and volumes (+5.9%). Sun Pharma’s sales improved from last quarter with growth of 14.5% YoY (Oct’19: 6.8%), mainly driven by Anti-infective/gastro (+29.8%/17.7% YoY). Secondary sales for Alembic (8.9% YoY), GSK (+9.4% YoY), Ajanta (+10.1% YoY), and Ipca (+11.4% YoY) were below IPM growth for Nov’19. On a MAT basis, JB Chemicals/Torrent reported highest price growth of 9.3%/8.2%. AstraZeneca saw highest growth in new launches (+5.5% YoY).

Respiratory therapy exhibited highest YoY growth of 19.7% among the top 10 therapies, followed by anti-infectives (+17% YoY) and pain-analgesics (+15.2% YoY) in Nov’19.