Indian drug firms' growth slowed in 2017 on slow approvals, MNCs' caught up

GST rollout, more medicines being brought under price control, slow rate of drug approvals by NPPA hit Indian players, which control 80% of the domestic pharma market

Home-grown pharmaceutical companies in 2017 saw some erosion in their edge over multinational peers in the domestic drug market. Tempering the past year’s trend of a significant lead, Indian drug firms grew at almost the same rate as their MNC counterparts.

While Indian pharma players clocked a 5.54 per cent growth rate during 2017, multinational ones grew at a shade higher (5.55 per cent rate), show data. This was partly because overall pharma growth slowed during the year, thanks to several factors, even as multinational companies saw a few months of high growth with specialised product launches.

According to data