About 30% products will be impacted by price control: Lupin

A group of ministers will meet on Wednesday to resolve the deadlock on the national pharma pricing policy. The GoM had earlier recommended market-based pricing for essential drugs and the government should control 30 percent of the market. The Finance Ministry in turn has recommended a cost-based pricing policy.

Meanwhile, Lupin expects to get a "pretty good" market share in the Fenofibrate anti-cholesterol drug Tricor (marketed by Abbott) segment, following the launch of its generic version on Tuesday.

The company's subsidiary Lupin Pharmaceuticals has launched Fenofibrate Tablets in 48mg and 145mg strengths in the US market.

Abbott's Tricor had sales of USD 1.26 billion, it said, citing IMS Health data for June.

Lupin also doesn't expect any significant threat to the already existing product Antara, which is also one of the fenofibrates.

The company had acquired the US rights for Antara (Fenofibrate capsules in 43mg and 130mg strength) in September 2009. It was earlier marketed by Oscient Pharmaceuticals.

Below is the edited transcript of the interview given to CNBC-TV18 by Ramesh- President- Finance & Planning, Lupin.

Q: What is your expectation in terms of monthly revenues from Tricor given the level of competition that you are working with and the kind of price erosion that you are likely to see?

A: Tricor is a 120 crore opportunity which is pretty large by generic standards. Given the fact that it is actually a three player market, today we have Teva, Lupin and potentially Valiant also. It is obviously going to be a limited competition market. So the price erosion is not going to be pretty high. Looking at our past track record of actually getting about 30-35 percent market share in anything that we get into, we would obviously expect us to get a pretty good market share in this particular molecule as well. So, we have pretty high expectations from Tricor.