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Unichem Laboratories aims $ 100 mn revenue from US

For this, the company will focus on differentiated complex generics, which are difficult to produce

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Last Updated : Jun 12 2017 | 2:54 PM IST

The Mumbai-based pharmaceutical company Unichem Laboratories is aiming to achieve $ 100 million revenue from the US, its fastest growing overseas market, by focusing on complex generics and first-to-file (Para IV) products. “Inspite of being a late entrant in the US, we have already crossed $40 million last year. And in terms of milestones, we would like to cross $50 million in the current year and $ 100 million in the coming years. For the company, US remains the fastest growing market and $ 100 million would be our first target before looking at the next target of $ 500 million,” said Rakesh Parikh, chief finance & compliance officer during Q4 FY2017 earnings call.

Till date, Unichem has received approvals for 23 ANDAs (abbreviated new drug applications) from US FDA, which includes one Para IV product. Going forward, the company plans to focus on differentiated complex generics, which are difficult to produce. “The on-going projects and the newer filings, which are happening as well as are planned, are going to shift towards complex generics, which are difficult to manufacture products. These will take couple of years to get approvals,” added Parikh.

The company also plans to invest about Rs 350 crores on APIs & formulation capacity expansion and R&D activities. Parikh informed, “Considering the work in progress, the plants, which have not been capitalised as far as the current fiscal FY17 is concerned, we would have spent about Rs 140 crores this year. Now, one major capex is the API expansion, which is going on, the new plant which is coming up as well as on the formulation side and existing API site. In addition, we have R&D expenditures. If you add all these projects which are in the pipeline, the total expenditure can be almost about Rs 300 to Rs 350 crores, which could be spread out over 2 years to 3 years.”

For the over-the-counter (OTC) market, which Unichem entered last year with the launch of Unienzyme (a digestive enzyme), the company will focus only on gastrointestinal (GI) sector. “We are going to introduce at least one more product in this financial year. We are looking the similar areas in GIs where we can use the Unienzyme equity and then launch our self into that big GI space,” commented B S Dhingra, chief executive - domestic pharma, Unichem.