Dr Reddy's arm gets preliminary results on AOK tender in Germany

betapharm AG, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical major Dr Reddy's Laboratories Limited (DRL), has received preliminary results of the tender called by Germany's largest health insurance company Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse (AOK) for discount agreements for 47 of the 48 products pertaining to betapharm. betapharm has been tentatively offered 8 products in different regions of Germany covering the AOK-insured persons.

The tender procedure is yet to be concluded and is expected to face potential legal objections by several companies. On signing the final contracts with AOK, betapharm will be the sole supplier for AOK-insured persons for these 8 products in the awarded regions.

“The preliminary results of the AOK tender establish betapharm’s competitiveness in the tender segment of the market in Germany. For the 8 products offered, we expect a significant increase in volume though at relatively lesser margins and for the balance portfolio, we expect the competitive intensity to continue,” VS Vasudevan, president (European operations), DRL, stated in a press release on Wednesday.

“Over the last few years, betapharm has aligned its sales force to strengthen relationships with doctors, pharmacies as well as channel partners. We leveraged Dr Reddy’s vertical integration and global supply chain capabilities to strengthen the supply chain for this market. beta institute (the group’s non-profit organisation) complements these capabilities with the long-term goodwill it has built with the medical community through several years of corporate social responsibility programmes. We believe that betapharm is well positioned to leverage all these strengths to continue to build a competitive business in all segments of the generics market in Germany,”said Satish Reddy, managing director and chief operating officer of DRL.