Lupin goes all out to make up for lost chances

India’s fifth largest drug maker by revenue, Lupin Ltd is charting a new course by investing in its intellectual property division, acquiring new assets in Latin America, and filing scores of new petitions to enter the US market to make up for years of missed opportunities. Lupin for three decades has been known as a low-cost antibiotics maker focused on the domestic market for tuberculosis drugs. Now, in 2009, Lupin filed 28 ANDAs in the US, and expects to file 35 this year. The high number of filings is a reflection of sweeping changes Lupin has made to its research and development (R&D) unit as part of its so-called “Growth Orbit II” strategy.

In 2009, it hired two expatriate R&D chiefs—Raj Kamboj, who heads new drug discovery and development, and Ninad Deshpande, who will head generic R&D and advanced drug delivery, with a combined team of 150 new employees to energize its modest research record. Earlier, it  only had APIs (active pharma ingredients or bulk drugs), the dying species.

The changes that Lupin belatedly undertook a decade ago are beginning to pay off. It reported an increase in consolidated net profit of 38% to Rs160 crore for the quarter ended December, and based on its December quarter performance is now a $1 billion (Rs 4,660 crore) firm in revenues. International filings, and partnerships with distributors in those markets, have put Lupin among the 10 fastest growing generics firms in the US and Japan, the world’s two largest pharma markets, according to pharma market data compiled by IMS Health Inc. as of March 2009. Lupin ranked ninth in the US, and eighth in Japan.

The new strategy targets revenue of $3 billion by fiscal 2013, which translates into a compounded annual growth rate of 30%. It reported a revenue of Rs1,270 crore for the quarter ended 31 December, against Rs 984 crore in the corresponding quarter the previous fiscal, an increase of 29%. In fiscal 2009, Lupin posted a revenue of Rs 3,914 crore. To get these new numbers, Lupin is also eyeing an acquisition of a manufacturing base, it has shortlisted a few targets, a departure from its earlier focus on acquiring only marketing firms in advanced markets such as the US, Germany and Japan. The proposed acquisition could be its most expensive to date, because Brazil and other Latin American countries insist that foreign firms must set up captive manufacturing units.

Lupin is also moving away from plain vanilla generic products to controlled release and other unique therapy systems such as new drug delivery and easy dosages. Controlled release drugs release the dosage into the bloodstream over many hours, instead of all at once, and are considered to be more effective. If it adds even one new therapy area, it can add 20 new products in the pipeline every year.