Pharma Monitor – January 2022: Strong IPM Growth, Says India Ratings

India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) highlights that the Indian pharmaceutical market (IPM) delivered strong growth of 13.9% yoy in January 2022, against the slower growth (yoy) reported in the last three months (December 2021: 5.3%; November 2021: 6.6% and October 2021: 5.0%), due to a lower base in January 2021 (4.5% yoy) and higher sales led by omicron cases.

"The acute therapy segment reported robust growth compared to sub-chronic and chronic segments in January 2022. Ind-Ra highlights that the acute therapy segment has been showing a robust performance since March 2021 (average growth at 27% yoy). Post normalisation of the high growth months of April 2021 (51.5% growth) and May 2021 (47.8%), led by the lockdown-related lower base last year and higher volume growth, the average IPM growth from June to January 2022 has been healthy (11.1% yoy). In terms of growth drivers, the price growth, new product launches growth and volume growth stood at 5.7%, 2.9% and 7.2% yoy, respectively, during the moving annual total, which led to an overall IPM size of INR1,691 billion in January 2022 (December 2021: INR1,671 billion)," India Ratings has said.

Strong Growth Reported in Acute Therapies

The acute therapy segment, according to India Ratings, reported strong sales growth of 22.2% yoy (December 2021: 5.3% yoy; November 2021: 6.0% yoy) while slower growth was seen in chronic and sub-chronic therapy segments at 7.3% yoy (4.8% yoy; 7.2% yoy) and 7.1% yoy (6.0%; 6.7%), respectively, in January 2022.

During FY21, Ind-Ra highlights that the acute therapy segment reported negative growth on account of COVID-19 while the chronic therapy segment reported average growth of 7.0%.