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Shailesh Gadre, Managing Director, ORG IMS, shares some highlights of the recently released MAT December 2007 figures and explains why the combined retail and hospital audit figures give a better picture of the Indian pharma industry. Viveka Roychowdhury reports

Rankings are only as good as the data collected. Uptil now, sales of Indian pharma players had two separate rankings, one based on sales made through stockists and the other on hospital-driven revenues. For the first time, ORG IMS has combined results of their trademark Hospitals Secondary Audit (HSA) with the Stockists Secondary Audit (SSA). This, according to Shailesh Gadre, Managing Director, ORG IMS, would capture almost 85 to 90 percent of pharma sales in a quarter. Cipla stays at numero uno position, while GSK breaks ranks to come second in the composite Q307 SSA+HSA Audits.

While the HSA captures institutional sales (to various hospitals and pharmacies within the vicinity of hospitals) on a quarterly basis, the SSA captures sales made via the secondary channels (distributors/ stockists). What is still out of the net are vaccine sales (which take place through different channels), direct sales made by pharma companies, tender business and pure generics, which would account for another ten percent. Acknowledging this, Gadre reveals that ORG IMS will be launching a Vaccine Audit by the third quarter of 2008, which would hopefully capture this data as well.

The HSA+SSA audited figures for the quarter ending December 2007, report a total size of Rs 33471 crore, with a growth of Rs 13.4 percent over the previous quarter. The total size of the HSA was Rs 2432.9 crore, with a growth of 10.2 percent, where as SSA netted Rs 31038.3 crores, with a slightly higher growth of 13.1 percent.

Analysing the figures, Gadre says that a lot of products are sold in both markets. Going ahead, the HSA figures may show a higher growth rate as more hospitals come up, many of them speciality hospitals. Another important growth driver is insurance coverage and as this increases, opportunities will also increase, points out Gadre.

Comparing the [Moving Annual Total (MAT) of December 2007, the anti diabetic therapeutic area had the highest growth rate of 26.1 percent, followed by the cardiology (21.3 percent) and gynaecology (18.3 percent) segments. Although total value of the Indian pharma market has increased from Rs 27374.5 crore [MAT December 2006] to Rs 31038.3 crore a year later, (MAT December 2007) there has been a dip in the value growth from 17.7 percent to 13.4 percent in the same period. Although the top three therapeutic segments remain the same, (ie. anti-infectives followed by gastro and cardiac,) the respiratory group is now in the fourth position, whereas the pain/analgesics has dropped to fifth position with a massive drop in value growth from 23.4 percent to 8.3 percent. There is also surprising growth in certain segments, for example, while the anti diabetic segment maintains the same position, it has shown a surprisingly good value growth from 19.5 percent (MAT December 2006) to 26.1 percent (MAT December 2007). The gynaecology segment has also recorded a growth from 15.9 percent to 18.3 percent.

viveka.r@expressindia.com