Gujarat pharma cos post growth in Oct as overall industry growth dips

State companies post 3.6% growth in October while industry posts negative growth of 1.7%

At a time when growth in big regions like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have dipped, Gujarat based pharma companies have registered moderate growth during the month of October. The overall industry posted a negative growth of 1.7 per cent.

According to data from the market research firm AIOCD Pharmasofttech AWACS, Gujarat has registered a 3.6 per cent growth during the month mainly led by growth in the respiratory, anti-diabetic and cardiac segments.

This comes at a time, when big markets like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have actually shown negative growth by 6.2 and 5.2 per cent last month. The AIOCD analysis further highlights that even small companies from Gujarat like Corona Remedies have seen high growth, (in fact, highest amongst the top 50 corporates in the country) at 69.4 per cent for the month of October followed by Biocon at 55.4 per cent and Meyer at 27.4 per cent.

Hari Natarajan, vice-president, business intelligence, India & global audit, AIOCD AWACS said that, "While Corona's high growth is partially because of base effect, as the company had a lower base last year, it is also because the company is trying to add new territories to its sales outreach. Recently, it has entered the southern market."

Other major corporates based in Gujarat like Zydus Cadila (together with its subsidiary Biochem) has clocked a 3.7 per cent growth in October, while Torrent Pharma has grown by 13.3 per cent, Alembic Pharma (1.8 per cent), Cadila Pharma (23.2 per cent). This is in sharp contrast to the growth figures of some of the biggest pharma majors in the country like Glaxo, which degrew by 34.9 per cent during the month, Ranbaxy (14.4 per cent) Pfizer (22.5 per cent).

Kerala too did well during October, rather beating Gujarat by growing 7 per cent during the month. However, in terms of moving annual turnover (MAT) Kerala's growth comes down to 1.8 per cent. Gujarat, in fact, does better than Kerala in terms of MAT growth rate at 5.6 per cent, highlights the analysis. The Drug Price Control Order 2013 segment of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) degrew by 48.9 per cent, while for Ranbaxy is degrew by 31.9 per cent. Coming to segments, the cardiac segment has done well in Gujarat with a MAT growth of 9.8 per cent, while anti-diabetic growth was at 8.2 per cent, hormones at 10.3 per cent and respiratory at 9 per cent.