目前，诺和诺德的Wegovy和礼来的Mounjaro是市场上最受欢迎的减肥药。这两家公司一直在努力满足美国和其他几个市场不断飙升的需求，并扩大生产规模，以争夺减肥药市场的主导地位。一些分析师预测，全球减肥药市场规模可能会在下一个十年达到1500亿美元。Concerned about falling behind rival Eli Lilly in India, the Indian team at Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk has been pushing the company to launch its popular diet drug, Wegovy, earlier in India.
Novo Nordisk previously said that once regulatory approval is obtained and supply is sufficient, Wegovy may enter India in 2026. Recently, however, Novo Nordisk's Indian team proposed to advance Wegovy's launch in India until next year, and Lilly is expected to launch its diet drug Mounjaro in India at the same time.
A person familiar with the matter said that at a closed-door meeting held at Novo Nordisk's Danish headquarters about two months ago, the Indian team expressed concern that if Wegovy is not launched in India as soon as possible, the company may lag behind Eli Lilly in the Indian market.
Currently, Novo Nordisk's Wegovy and Eli Lilly's Mounjaro are the most popular weight loss pills on the market. The two companies have been struggling to meet surging demand in the US and several other markets and scale up production to compete for dominance in the diet pills market. Some analysts predict that the global weight loss medicine market could reach $150 billion in the next decade.
According to a source familiar with the matter, Novo Nordisk obtained regulatory approval for semaglutide (active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic) in India at the end of 2022. The company said in a statement that it is working to get Wegovy to go public, but there is no confirmed listing date.
As a country with a population of over 1.4 billion, the obesity rate in India has increased in recent years. According to a government survey conducted from 2019 to 2021, among people aged 15 to 49, 24% of women and 23% of men were overweight or obese, up from 20.6% and 19% from 2015 to 2016, respectively. Although Indian generic manufacturers, including Cipla and Dr Reddy's, are making cheaper Wegovy generics, the time to market for these generic drugs will be limited by the patent period. Meanwhile, India's highest-grossing pharmaceutical company Sun Pharmaceutical is developing its own experimental GLP diet drug.
