COVID-19 pushes down growth of Indian Pharma market to 0.2%

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a mixed bag for the Indian Pharmaceutical Market (IPM) that registered a muted growth in July on the back of a sharper decline in volumes and higher off take of trade generic medicines.

The IPM grew by 0.2% YoY in July (higher 2.4% growth in June) but overall volumes declined by a sharper 6.5%, an analysis done by Motilal Oswal said.

According to the brokerage report on the healthcare sector, lower growth and volumes in July was offset to some extent by price growth of 4.6% YoY and growth in new launches of 2.2% YoY.

The pandemic has brought about major changes in the medication needs of the masses impacting the operation of the pharmaceutical companies with those dealing in respiratory, anti-diabetic, cardiac therapies performing much better than others having anti-infective, gastro, vitamin or pain therapies in their portfolio.

The sudden change in preferred therapies by masses has just taken a sharp turn from the pre-COVID period when gastric, vitamin therapies were most widely used. Probably, the concern that coronavirus impacts adversely chronic heart, lung and diabetics severely had turned people into buying more medicines for these ailments.

In the month of July, cardiac/anti-diabetic/VMN (vitamins, minerals and nutrients) therapies exhibited positive growth of 13.1% YoY/5.9% YoY/5.5%YoY respectively, while anti-infective was down 10.2% YoY (v/s -9.7% YoY in June 2020) while gastro sales dipped 2.4% YoY (v/s flat YoY in June 2020). Pain/analgesics also declined further by 6.7% YoY (v/s -1.9% YoY in June 2020).

In value terms, secondary sales grew one per cent YoY for National list of Essential Medicines or NLEM (16% of IPM) while it remained muted for non-NLEM (84% of IPM) in July. While price growth for the non-NLEM products stood at 4.7% YoY, volumes declined 7.2% YoY.

The brokerage report said that in July, Glenmark (+30.3% YoY), JB Chemicals (+12.8% YoY) and Ipca (+11.5% YoY) delivered the highest growth.

Glenmark's anti-infective segment increased 1.7x YoY, mainly on account of Flabiflu (Covid drug) sales. JB Chemicals grew on the back of robust uptake in its cardiac therapy sales (50.8 per cent of therapy mix), which grew 24.6% YoY.

Ipca witnessed good traction in pain/analgesics (+23.4% YoY; 29 per cent of therapy mix) and anti-malaria (+17.8% YoY; 16 per cent of therapy mix) segments.

Sun Pharma's sales dipped 3.2% YoY (v/s flat YoY growth in June 2020), dragged by decline in anti-infective (-23.8% YoY) and gastro (-10.3 % YoY).

Glaxo, Natco and Wockhardt exhibited weakest sales at -10.8%/-11.1%/-26.8 per cent YoY respectively in July.

Cardiac, anti-malaria and respiratory therapies exhibited the highest growth of 11.1% YoY, 10.5% YoY and 10% YoY on MAT basis in July 2020. However, gynecology (-0.8% YoY) and anti-neoplastic (-2.1% YoY) therapies remained dim.