With both sides of the political aisle in the US promising in their pre-poll campaigns to take measures to lower healthcare costs, Lupin CEO Vinita Gupta is hopeful that critical products such as biosimilars will get more support from the next government.

There will be an even stronger focus on generics and biosimilars, said Gupta, adding that these product help bring “material savings” to the overall healthcare cost.

 

As the US elections are poised for a final verdict, Indian drugmakers also expect the accent on localisation to continue, besides the focus on reducing healthcare costs. “A majority of our business and our industry is focussed on the generics business, which brings savings to the healthcare systems; it should do better,” Gupta told BusinessLine , speaking from the US.

Even for drugmakers who may have operations in the US, efforts to localise manufacturing works contrary to the idea of bringing down costs, observed a US-based industry-watcher.

“Localising manufacturing will have an impact on cost, it would be hard to get the cost benefit that we get in India,” Gupta agreed, adding that companies would be open to localise if they got some relief on the pricing front. Conversations from a company and industry standpoint seek support for localisation efforts with some sort of commitment on volumes, besides pricing relief, she said.

With the buzz being that an opportunity may also open up for companies to be able to participate in America’s national health insurance programme, she said. Since Lupin is into niche products, its will look at products best suited to participate in this opportunity, she added. The company expects its biosimilars and inhalation products portfolio to play an important part in its overseas growth plans.

Covid opportunities

With the Indian pharma industry and vaccine-makers featuring prominently in the Covid landscape for the manufacture of vaccines and other therapies, Gupta said they were looking at marketing opportunities for other therapeutics and would be open to help with the distribution of vaccines, when one is available in India. The company is presently looking at taking its version of Covid-drug favipiravir to other markets.

Lupin had recently announced its results for the three months ended September 30, where it clocked total revenues of Rs 3835 crore and profit after tax of Rs 213 crore. The company had also had a cyber-attack recently, making it the second Indian company in two weeks to have an “information security incident”. Gupta pointed out that the incident had been addressed and the company hoped to come out of it “with very little disruption”.

Lupin is looking for a turnaround in the forthcoming year and it is already being witnessed, she said, adding that they were optimistic on growth in revenues and margin expansion over the next six months.

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