Amar Vennapusa, a bariatric surgeon, fills a syringe with Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro, a tirzepatide injection drug used for treating kind 2 diabetes and weight reduction, at his well being clinic in Hyderabad, India, on April 14, 2025. – Almaas Masood/Reuters
On any given morning in Mumbai’s Shivaji Park, power-walkers circle the operating monitor, health watches buzzing with each step. Minutes later, some drift towards close by meals stalls, the place oil sizzles and scorching samosas and syrupy jalebis land on paper plates. It’s a snapshot of India’s uneasy relationship with well being and indulgence – and the backdrop to a fast-growing medical and industrial frenzy.
That frenzy is over the upcoming expiry of a patent defending semaglutide, a protein that mimics a hormone telling your mind that you just’re not hungry. It’s a key ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s wildly standard injectable weight-loss drug Ozempic.
Novo Nordisk’s India patent will expire in March. And the nation’s colossal pharma manufacturing trade is gearing up to take benefit by promoting generic variations.
Analysts there predict a value conflict that would drive the price of some weight-loss drugs down by as a lot as 90 % in India – and probably in different nations too. Jefferies, the funding financial institution, describes it as a “magic pill moment” for India, projecting that the semaglutide market might develop to $1 billion.
“We are fully prepared and geared up,” Namit Joshi, chairman of the federal government’s Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil), instructed NCS. “There will be a bombardment of this product the moment the patent expires.”
Just as India – generally known as the “pharmacy of the world” – helped make HIV drugs cheaper and extra extensively accessible a long time in the past, analysts say it might develop into the important thing, low-cost provider of a new world well being revolution in opposition to weight problems.
The shift may be transformative for India, at present the world’s diabetes capital and among the many fastest-growing markets on the planet for anti-obesity remedies and drugs. By 2050, 450 million adults in India are projected to be chubby, in accordance to an estimate in medical journal The Lancet.
Semaglutide mimics a hormone that regulates urge for food and blood sugar – basically, it tells your mind you’re full. It’s the core a part of standard commercially accessible anti-obesity drugs like Ozempic, which is usually bought pre-loaded into a syringe that sufferers self-inject with.
It’s a technique India’s pharma giants are assured they’ll replicate, come March.
At least 10 Indian corporations, together with Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Cipla, and OneSource Specialty Pharma have began processes to manufacture semaglutide weight-loss drugs, in accordance to paperwork reviewed by NCS.
OneSource says it’s investing practically $100 million as a part of plans to ramp up manufacturing capability by 5 instances over the subsequent 18 to 24 months, significantly for drug-device mixture merchandise – issues like syringes prepped with weight-loss drugs, together with semaglutide.
Workers of a candy producer put together jalebis candy on the event of the Hindu competition of Dussehra throughout early morning in Mumbai, on October 25, 2020. – Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images
Another Indian firm, Biocon, instructed NCS it has commissioned an injectables facility within the metropolis of Bengaluru, designed to serve each home and worldwide markets, with a whole funding of round $100 million.
The agency is hoping to launch the merchandise in 2027, CEO Siddharth Mittal added, and has plans to export to Brazil and Canada.
Rival agency Dr. Reddy’s instructed Reuters it plans to launch the generic model of semaglutide in 87 nations, together with India, subsequent 12 months. Its CEO Erez Israeli stated he expects the generic drug to generate “hundreds of millions of dollars” in gross sales for the corporate.
Pharmexcil’s Joshi believes the typical value of a month-to-month dose in India might fall to $77 inside a 12 months after the patent’s expiry, and finally to round $40.
That sort of pricing wont be seen on US cabinets anytime quickly – Ozempic’s US patent doesn’t expire till the 2030s.
At 70 years previous, Mahesh Chamadia had nearly given up on the concept of losing a few pounds. The Mumbai accountant wakes at 4:30 a.m. for badminton, retains a treadmill at house, and has tried gyms, diets, and yoga. But the burden all the time got here again. After 25 years of attempting, he wanted to discover a resolution, and quick. “I did not want to carry this heavy weight as I got older and older,” he instructed NCS.
Then, in 2024 Chamadia began studying about a new class of injectable drugs making headlines overseas. Every week, he scoured the papers for updates. At his checkups, he would quiz his physician: When are they coming to India?
By March 2025, when Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide (bought underneath the model title Mounjaro) hit Indian pharmacies, he was first in line. “I told my doctor, I want to try it,” he remembers.
Nine months later, he’s 10 kilograms (22 kilos) lighter – greater than he’s misplaced in a long time. His blood sugar typically dips to 100, the unicorn quantity for diabetics, one thing he says has “never happened in his history of 25 years of diabetes.”
Vials of Mounjaro, a tirzepatide injection drug used for treating kind 2 diabetes and weight reduction, are seen in a fridge at a well being clinic in Hyderabad, India, on April 14, 2025. – Almaas Masood/Reuters
His triglycerides – the most typical kind of physique fats – fell for the primary time, his power surged, and even his cravings lowered. “Every Sunday for 25 years I brought samosas home after badminton. Now I don’t. My cravings have become negligible.”
According to analysis agency Pharmarack, Mounjaro has rapidly risen to develop into India’s second-largest pharmaceutical model in September 2025 – simply six months after its launch. A growth in weight-loss drug gross sales has remodeled Eli Lilly into a Wall Street heavyweight, its top off greater than 35% this 12 months and its market worth not too long ago crossing $1 trillion.
The medication doesn’t come low cost. Chamadia says he spends round 25,000 Indian rupees ($280) per thirty days on his injections – greater than the wage of many staff.
“Yes, it is expensive,” he says, “but it doesn’t matter too much. My insulin doses have come down, some of my other diabetes medicines have reduced.”
These drugs are usually not with out dangers. According to the web site of Wegovy, one other standard model, the most typical unwanted effects embrace nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, constipation, belly ache, and complications.
And in a nation the place Bollywood stars and social media influencers closely form physique picture, docs fear the drugs could possibly be misused.
Some clinics have already began promoting these injections as a part of pre-wedding crash slimming packages to assist brides or grooms get into form rapidly for his or her massive day.
“Whenever you have a surge in demand, especially with weight-loss drugs, there is bound to be misuse,” weight problems specialist Dr. Rajiv Kovil instructed NCS.
“These are not meant for cosmetic slimming before a wedding or a party,” he cautioned.
“The management of obesity comes as a package; semaglutide is just one tool,” stated Dr. Atul Luthra, endocrinologist at Fortis Hospital, close to the capital New Delhi.
“Regular physical activity and a proper diet not only improve the efficacy of semaglutide but also help with its tolerability. If people don’t follow the required dietary precautions, they will experience more stomach and intestine-related side effects.”
Back in his physician’s workplace, Chamadia scrolls on his telephone, scanning information alerts about the soon-to-launch higher-dose injection pens. “It should have arrived in India by now,” he says, glancing on the physician. For him, every supply is greater than a prescription refill – it’s a measure of progress, of lastly gaining management over his well being.
Doctors, in the meantime, are bracing for a flood of recent sufferers in search of the injections – some, like Chamadia, who medically qualify, and others drawn by the lure of a fast repair.
For docs and policymakers, the countdown will carry a totally different urgency: whether or not this new period of weight-loss drugs can meaningfully sort out an weight problems epidemic projected to engulf practically half a billion Indians, or whether or not it’s going to go away the nation chasing a resolution in a syringe whereas ignoring the more durable work of fixing diets and existence.
Chamadia, for one, is satisfied. He is already urging his 38-year-old son, who can be fighting weight problems and diabetes, to be a part of him in injecting appetite-suppressing drugs.
“This is not only about weight loss,” Chamadia insists. “It is about controlling everything else – sugar, fatty liver, lipids.”
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