Biocon launches second-generation INSUpen EZ

Reema: Yesterday one of your partners Haselmeier made an announcement that they along with Biocon have launched INSUPen EZ in India. How big is this particular development for Biocon?

A: Insulin is a very big area for us, we are focused on becoming the insulin company in the country in the years ahead. I think a very important part of insulin delivery is an insulin pen.

Our first pen that we introduced into the market was INSUPen which was also developed by Haselmeier for us but this is an expensive metallic pen and over the years.

Haselmeier has developed for us a pen which we call INSUPen EZ which is a lower cost pen which obviously will help us then to penetrate the market in a bigger way. So this is really what the news is about.

We see insulin as a huge global opportunity for us and therefore INSUPen EZ will not just be marketed in India but we hope to take INSUPen EZ worldwide.

Nigel: Could you tell us what is the total market size of this product and who are the competitors?

A: Insulin is a life saving diabetes drug that is used globally. Diabetes is a growing pandemic and insulin users are just increasing at double digit growth rates because of the incidence of diabetes and insulin dependence of many of the diabetics.

Insulin and insulin analogues account for almost USD 20 billion globally. Therefore the delivery devise also becomes very important as we look at this market opportunity. Biocon has partnered Mylan in insulin analogues and Biocon itself is developing the insulin and we are eyeing this huge global opportunity in a very aggressive way. So if we don’t have good devices, we will not be able to carve out the kind of market share that we are looking at.

Reema: Your domestic business has done well this quarter with a solid 17 percent growth in Q2 and this is after two quarters of a decline. So has the domestic business turned around for Biocon and can it deliver say a 15-20 percent growth from here on?

A: Certainly I think that this is a segment that we are very focused on, we are a speciality pharmaceutical segment with a large part of our products as biologics so we are highly differentiated. I think in this growth numbers I would like to say that a large part of these growth earnings have come from two key segments, one is our diabetes segment which is anchored by our insulin and insulin analogue and then we have our oncology segment which has also done extremely well.

Our recent launch of CANMAb has been doing extremely well. So we are very confident that we will end the year on these high double digit growth levels.

Reema: I believe in your various interactions with analysts post the earnings you indicated that Biopharmaceuticals is expected to remain weak for the rest of the fiscal. When you say weak do we expect that Biopharma base business will show a decline of 0-5 percent even in the coming two quarters?

A: The biopharma business actually has been affected by a couple of things, one is of course we were very dependent on a very high value product which was Fidaxomicin and Fidaxomicin offtake has been weak largely because the company themselves have basically reduced their offtake given that they have large inventory of this particular API.

Then we have also been affected quite seriously by the turmoil in the Middle East where many of our products were doing extremely well and because of the credit risk involved in the Middle East we have seen a decline in that area and that market. So based on that we are saying that we expect it to see muted growth for the whole Biopharma sector. But having said that there could be some upsides for us which will get captured over the next two quarters. But because these are unpredictable upsides I don’t want to comment on it or even say that we will deliver on these possible upsides.