Eli Lilly eyes India as global manufacturing hub amid rising drug demand

Mounjaro-maker Eli Lilly wants to turn India into a hub for its global supply chain, a senior executive at the US drugmaker said, as part of its previously committed $1 billion investment to contract manufacturing in the country. 

Sales of the blockbuster weight-loss drug doubled within months of its launch in India, and became its top-selling medicine by value, underscoring the growing popularity of obesity treatments in a country projected to have the world's second-largest obese population by 2050. 

The company, which does not currently operate its own manufacturing facility in India, plans to export locally produced drugs to markets across the world as part of its broader supply network, drawing on the country’s robust contract manufacturing setup. 

"We are actually looking at India to be a hub, part of our global supply chain, ‌and therefore supplying the world," Winselow Tucker, president and general manager, Eli Lilly and Company (India), told Reuters on the sidelines of the BioAsia conference in Hyderabad.