Lupin ranked fifth generic drug company in U.S.

Indian drug maker Lupin has become one of the top five generic drug companies operating in the U.S. market in terms of number of prescriptions. This is a first among Indian generic companies selling drugs in the US, the largest market in the world, writes P B Jayakumar of Business Standard.

Lupin is now behind Teva Pharma of Israel, Mylan Labs, Novartis and Watson Pharma. It had an average of a little over 8.4 million prescriptions a month in year between May 2009 and April 2010, said IMS, a global market research agency that tracks drug prescription sales in the US market.


In the previous year, Lupin had moved into the top 10 rankings at eighth position. Three Indian companies - Dr Reddy's Laboratories, Zydus Cadila and Aurobindo - are among the top 15 companies in the U.S. market, at 11, 12 and 13th positions, respectively. Glenmark (rank 18), Ranbaxy Laboratories (20), Sun Pharma (25) and Torrent (26) are the other Indian drug makers among the top 30 players in the U.S. generic business, said the data.

However, the journey further up the ladder will be tough for Lupin, as Watson Pharma, ranked fourth in the list, generates more than double the number of prescriptions for Lupin. Lupin's largest market, the U.S., had grown by about 38 percent in 2009-10 to Rs. 1,789 crore, of a total revenue of Rs. 4,740.5 crore. In March and April this year, Lupin had over a million prescriptions in the U.S. market.

"We are happy that we could achieve our target of breaking into the top five position a few years before we targeted to reach that milestone. We could achieve it in just five years, in a market dominated by players like Teva and Mylan which are there for the last two decades," Nilesh Gupta, executive director of Lupin, told Business Standard.

Lupin had filed a record 37 product registration filings and 19 bulk drug or raw material registration filings with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during 2009-10.