Eli Lilly’s weight-loss therapy Mounjaro tops India drug sales by value in October

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(Corrects sales volume of Augmentin to 5.8 million from 5784 and sales volume of Mounjaro to 85,000 from 85 in paragraph 3. Corrects paragraph 8 to say number of doses, not units)

By Rishika Sadam

HYDERABAD (Reuters) -Eli Lilly’s weight-loss therapy Mounjaro became India’s top-selling drug by value in October, data showed on Friday, overtaking GSK’s widely used antibiotic Augmentin, as demand surges in the world’s most populous nation.

The U.S. drugmaker’s popular injectable therapy raked in 1 billion rupees ($11.38 million) in October, research firm Pharmarack said. That outpaced Augmentin sales of 800 million rupees last month.

By volume, Augmentin was way higher than Mounjaro with 5.8 million units sold during October, compared with just 85,000 units of Mounjaro, which is sold at a much higher price point.

The news comes as India becomes a key battleground for drugmakers, looking to grab a slice of the burgeoning weight-loss treatment market, which some analysts predict will generate $150 billion a year or more by the end of the decade.

Mounjaro, which helps control blood sugar and slow digestion, saw its sales double within months of its March launch in India, ahead of rival Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, which entered the market in June.

The drug has generated 3.33 billion rupees in revenue till the end of October, according to Pharmarack.

“Mounjaro’s consumption in India by volume was 10 times more than Wegovy in October,” Sheetal Sapale, Pharmarack’s Vice President (Commercial), told the media on Friday.

While Lilly sold 262,000 Mounjaro doses last month, Novo Nordisk sold 26,000 Wegovy doses.

Both belong to a class of therapies known as GLP-1 receptor agonists, which help patients feel fuller for longer and are increasingly used to treat obesity and diabetes.

The rapid uptake of these drugs reflects growing demand for weight-loss treatments in India, where lifestyle diseases are on the rise.

Lilly also signed a deal with Indian drugmaker Cipla last month to sell Mounjaro under a separate brand name.

Globally, Lilly and Novo have seen soaring demand for their anti-obesity therapies, prompting supply constraints and pricing scrutiny.

Both companies have struck a deal with the Trump administration to reduce prices of their GLP-1 drugs for U.S. government programs, aiming to improve access amid mounting pressure over affordability.

Wegovy’s active ingredient semaglutide will lose patent protection in India in March 2026 and that has prompted many Indian drugmakers to develop their own versions of the wildly in-demand drug.

(Reporting by Rishika Sadam; Editing by Janane Venkatraman, Dhanya Skariachan and Eileen Soreng)