Lupin to increase R&D spend to highest in India

Lupin is on its way to making the highest R&D spend in the pharma industry

Lupin is on its way to making the highest R&D spend in the pharma industry. Vice-chairman Kamal Sharma said it will be spending 10% of its turnover on R&D soon. “Our R&D spend is inching to 10%. We are now at 8.5%,” he said. Lupin’s R&D investments have been in the 7.5-8.75% of the turnover range for the last five years. In FY15, Lupin spent R1,119 crore on R&D expenses. Lupin’s R&D investment has doubled in the last five years, Sharma said. The average R&D spend for the industry is around 5-7%.

Lupin has two R&D centres each in India and Japan. The Lupin Research Park in Pune has a talent pool of 1,400 scientists and is ramping up with fresh investments, Sharma said. He declined to share details of the expansion in the R&D budget, but said it will happen soon. The company has, till date, 210 ANDA filing, of which 111 have be approved and 12 were done in FY15. The company has filed 2,197 patents.

At the Pune International Centre (PIC) in Pune, Sharma pushed for a manufacturing-led growth in India. He cited the journey of Lupin as a successful ‘Make in India’ story. The PIC along with the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) has launched a lecture series on ‘Make in India’ success stories and lessons learnt from them.

Lupin has managed to transform into a global company despite all the challenges faced in the manufacturing business in India. Lupin has 11 manufacturing sites in India and two in Latin America one in Russia and two in Japan. Sharma said Lupin transformed itself from a company with an around $400-million market capitalisation in 2004 to $12-billion M-cap currently with revenues of $2.2 billion. “The company transformed by being a domestic focused bulk drug player in 2005 to a global company with 72% of business coming from exports and 90% of the turnover from formulations,” Sharma said. The US accounts for 72% of Lupin’s overseas revenues followed by 14% from Japan.

In R&D, Lupin is moving up the value chain from generic business and getting into specialty business, Sharma said.

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