Ozempic play: Mankind Pharma in the fray for weight-loss drugs
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Mankind Pharma, India’s fourth largest drugmaker by domestic sales, is setting its sights on anti-obesity drugs like Semaglutide, better known by brand names Ozempic and Wegovy, which goes off-patent early next year. The pharma major is the latest among the country’s top generics drugmakers, including Dr.
Reddy's Laboratories and Natco Pharma, to explore a potential launch of the drug, and is banking on partnerships and its strong market presence to gain an edge, a senior executive told Mint in an interview. “Obesity is the market everybody wants to look at, it's a very, very big market opening up…we are no exception to that," Atish Majumdar, senior president at Mankind Pharma, told Mint. “We are also keenly looking at it," Majumdar, who leads the company’s specialty division out of Mumbai, said.
The company is considering a foray in GLP-1 drugs, a class of medicines used to treat type 2 diabetes, which includes Semaglutide. This comes as Mankind has been driving up chronic portfolio and specialty divisions - a strategic shift that is in line with how disease trends have been shaping up, Majumdar said. The anti-obesity and weight loss drug market has exploded with demand outpacing supply.
Semaglutide, and other GLP-1 drugs have been hailed as miracle drugs for their weight loss treatment. According to estimates by JM Financial Institutional Securities, the exact market for Semaglutide is likely to be larger than $28-29 billion globally, given the unmet demand. Per estimates by Goldman Sachs, the market for GLP-1 drugs is expected to reach $100 billion by 2030.
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