India’s pharmaceutical companies are in an intense race to create cheaper generic versions of weight-loss drugs after the patent for the active ingredient semaglutide expired in the country.
The surge in GLP-1 development — which one executive called a “bloodbath” — comes as the industry rushes to meet the growing demand in India, where nearly a third of adults are obese.
The landscape is also shaped by manufacturing capacity concerns: At last week’s Semafor World Economy, Eli Lilly’s CEO framed new oral pills as a “huge scale” solution for global supply constraints, saying that “no matter how hard we want to try, we cannot reach the planet” with traditional injectable treatments.