Cipla chief says Indian healthcare market will ride high on wellness wave

CNBC-TV18’s Shereen Bhan is in conversation with Umang Vohra, MD & Global CEO of Cipla, which today is the third largest pharmaceutical company in India.

In fact, the stock has been an outperformer, up about 8 percent year to date versus the Pharma Nifty which is down 9 percent in the same period.

The company has come a long way from the first big global breakthrough in 2001, when it introduced an HIV combination drug for less than a dollar a day, a game-changing development for HIV therapy.

Today, Cipla hopes to transform itself into a global healthcare organisation with a sharp focus on strengthening its presence in the US market in the complex generic peptides and respiratory markets.

Vohra said that he sees incredible deepening of the Indian healthcare market. “We are seeing in India is incredible amounts of deepening of the healthcare market into tier two and six towns. We are seeing a wave towards wellness and both of these are opportunities that we want to capitalise not just for India, but also for the rest of the markets across the world.”

He added, “We are also looking at new innovation and R&D that can perhaps take us into new areas like biosimilars into areas like the mRNA and other areas and therapies, which frankly, COVID brought to the fore more significantly than before.”

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On investments in wellness space, Vohra said, “We have very large organic brands in the wellness space and our objective would be to grow and deepen these organically first.”

Vohra pegged the wellness business at around about Rs 600 crore and said, "We can see this business growing on the health side itself too — close to about Rs 2,500-3,000 crore over the next five years."

Vohra further said they are in active talks with several players to focus on mRNA tech.

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