India’s Piramal Pharma eyes complex drug demand for earnings boost, chair says

By Kashish Tandon

April 29 (Reuters) – India’s Piramal Pharma hopes to accelerate earnings growth over the next two to three years, led by rising demand for complex drugs, including targeted cancer therapies, a top executive said on Wednesday.

The company, which sells popular medicines like the emergency contraceptive tablet i-pill and lacto calamine lotion in India, relies on contract drug manufacturing for 55% of its overall revenue.

Global biotech funding into Indian contract drug makers is improving after a year of slowdown marked by macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty. Indian drugmakers also stand to gain from U.S. curbs on biotech funding for rival Chinese firms.

“Biotech funding in the second half of the year was about 80% higher than in the second half of last year, and that is now translating into higher requests for proposals and order inflows,” Nandini Piramal, chairperson of Piramal Pharma, told Reuters, attributing the funding pick-up to lower interest rates and reduced uncertainty in the U.S. pharma sector. 

The company expects to clock early-to-mid-teens revenue growth in two to three years, the chairperson said, after reporting a 3% drop in fiscal 2026 revenue, hurt by a 10% slump in its contract drug manufacturing, its biggest vertical. The revenue loss caused margins to shrink to 13% from 17%. 

Within contract manufacturing, Piramal is prioritising higher-value segments. 

Global demand has been rising for antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), which are targeted cancer therapies that link chemotherapy drugs to antibodies, as drugmakers expand oncology pipelines. 

“We’ve added a significant number of customers, both big pharma and biotech, as this sector (CDMO) has grown,” Piramal said. 

What is not moving up the priority ladder for the company are the active ingredients for weight-loss drugs, generic semaglutides, given the intense competition and falling prices in the market, she said. 

“These (ADCs) are high fixed-cost businesses, and as revenues grow, operating leverage flows through to the bottom line.”

($1 = 94.8375 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Kashish Tandon in Bengaluru)