Third wave reorders India's pharma sweepstakes, antibiotic Azithral becomes top-selling drug

Indian pharma industry recently witnessed a notable rejig in terms of the pecking order in top-selling products.

In January 2022, Azithral became the largest-selling pharma brand for the first time. The antibiotic medicine, marketed by Alembic Pharma, beat Human Mixtard, the market leader anti-diabetic therapy.

Usually, the sales pecking order in India is topped by lifestyle disease medicines — such as diabetes including Human Mixtard (Novo Nordisk), Glycomet-GP (USV) and Lantus (Sanofi) — in normal years.

According to a ToI report on India's organised pharma retail sweepstakes, the widely-used drug saw sales soar 20X during the third wave of the pandemic. It registered a 100% jump in January over the previous month (December 2021).

Other medicine that saw a sale spike during the third wave included Calpol and Dolo (pain-relief tablets), and Grilinctus (cough syrup). Sales of each of these went up as much as 200 per cent, the report said.

After Covid cases began rising rapidly in January, antibiotics such as azithromycin, painkillers, anti-infectives and cough syrups became the most prescribed drugs in the country, ToI quoted experts as saying.

The above numbers are for January only. For the full year ending December 2021, Azithral registered sales of Rs 450 crore and was the 14th-highest selling drug in India. For the preceding full year, sales had stood at Rs 250 crore.

It is worth mentioning here that Azithral has been around for years, and has had a distinct first-mover advantage in the Indian market.