Lupin sets sights on birth control market

India's Lupin is eyeing a $200 million chunk of the U.S. contraceptive market. The company has asked FDA to approve 11 of its copycat oral contraceptives, and plans to file another 10 apps within seven months, the Economic Times reports, aiming to take U.S. patients by storm beginning in 2011.

The market for birth control pills in the U.S. is valued at around $4 billion, company executives said. It's growing about 10 percent per year, too. To capture a big portion of that business, "[i]t makes sense to have a complete basket of products so that one can drive serious value into the market," Lupin Group President Nilesh Gupta told reporters. "Lupin would be one of the few innovators to drive it in."

Along the way, Lupin will have to fight patent litigation over its FDA applications, some of which is already ongoing. But Gupta says he's confident the company will eventually prevail. "There is no reason to believe that [oral contraceptives] would not account for $100 million to $200 million for Lupin." We'll see how it goes.

- read the Economic Times piece [1]

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