By Ayushi Shah, CNN
Mumbai, India (CNN) — On any given morning in Mumbai’s Shivaji Park, power-walkers circle the running track, fitness watches buzzing with every step. Minutes later, some drift toward nearby food stalls, where oil sizzles and hot samosas and syrupy jalebis land on paper plates. It’s a snapshot of India’s uneasy relationship with health and indulgence – and the backdrop to a fast-growing medical and commercial frenzy.
That frenzy is over the imminent expiry of a patent protecting semaglutide, a protein that mimics a hormone telling your brain that you’re not hungry. It’s a key ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s wildly popular injectable weight-loss drug Ozempic.
Novo Nordisk’s India patent will expire in March. And the country’s colossal pharma production industry is gearing up to take advantage by selling generic versions.
Analysts there predict a price war that could drive the cost of some weight-loss drugs down by as much as 90 percent in India – and possibly in other countries too. Jefferies, the investment bank, describes it as a “magic pill moment” for India, projecting that the semaglutide market could grow to $1 billion.
“We are fully prepared and geared up,” Namit Joshi, chairman of the government’s Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil), told CNN. “There will be a bombardment of this product the moment the patent expires.”
Just as India – known as the “pharmacy of the world” – helped make HIV drugs cheaper and more widely available decades ago, analysts say it could become the key, low-cost supplier of a new global health revolution against obesity.
The shift could also be transformative for India, currently the world’s diabetes capital and among the fastest-growing markets on the planet for anti-obesity treatments and drugs. By 2050, 450 million adults in India are projected to be overweight, according to an estimate in medical journal The Lancet.
Semaglutide mimics a hormone that regulates appetite and blood sugar – essentially, it tells your brain you’re full. It’s the core part of popular commercially available anti-obesity drugs like Ozempic, which is often sold pre-loaded into a syringe that patients self-inject with.
It’s a method India’s pharma giants are confident they can replicate, come March.
At least 10 Indian firms, including Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Cipla, and OneSource Specialty Pharma have started processes to manufacture semaglutide weight-loss drugs, according to documents reviewed by CNN.
OneSource says it is investing nearly $100 million as part of plans to ramp up production capacity by five times over the next 18 to 24 months, particularly for drug-device combination products – things like syringes prepped with weight-loss drugs, including semaglutide.
Another Indian company, Biocon, told CNN it has commissioned an injectables facility in the city of Bengaluru, designed to serve both domestic and international markets, with a total investment of around $100 million.
The firm is hoping to launch the products in 2027, CEO Siddharth Mittal added, and has plans to export to Brazil and Canada.
Rival firm Dr. Reddy’s told Reuters it plans to launch the generic version of semaglutide in 87 countries, including India, next year. Its CEO Erez Israeli said he expects the generic drug to generate “hundreds of millions of dollars” in sales for the company.
Pharmexcil’s Joshi believes the average price of a monthly dose in India could fall to $77 within a year after the patent’s expiry, and eventually to around $40.
That kind of pricing wont be seen on US shelves anytime soon – Ozempic’s US patent doesn’t expire until the 2030s.
At 70 years old, Mahesh Chamadia had almost given up on the idea of losing weight. The Mumbai accountant wakes at 4:30 a.m. for badminton, keeps a treadmill at home, and has trie