Granules India after acquiring Auctus Pharma in November 2013 has now embarked on a forward integration mode in an effort to expand its global market presence primarily to regulated regions.

Auctus has two manufacturing facilities, an active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) facility in the Pharmacity at Vishakhapatnam and an Intermediate production unit at Hyderabad. The APIs facility has approvals from leading regulatory agencies including the US FDA, EDQM, Health Canada, KFDA and WHO-GMP. While Auctus exports to 50 countries, Granules international market spread is to 70 countries.

Further Granules has also accommodated its existing product mix of paracetamol, metformin, ibuprofen and guaifenesin with that of Auctus' product portfolio which includes 12 APIs as well as key intermediates in  therapeutic categories such as anti-histaminic anti-hypertensive, anti-thrombotic and anti-convulsant among others.

“Post the acquisition, our focus is to increase the exports to regulated markets as Auctus has also received the US FDA approval. Going forward, we will forward integrate several of these APIs into Finished Dosages for the regulated markets,” Krishna Prasad, managing director of Granules India told Pharmabiz.

The acquisition of Auctus has now exposed us to new therapeutic sectors. “The plan is that we will continue to pursue our business model of large-volume products whether on the API or Finished Dosage front,” he added.

“We will sustain the marketing efforts to both branded and generics leaders as well as quality-conscious customers in the semi-regulated markets. The Auctus products will be offered to many of our existing customers since they currently have a requirement for many of these, stated the Granules managing director.

“We opted for the Auctus acquisition primarily because it was seen as the right fit to our operations. There was significant value to its purchase because it manufactures its own intermediates  which makes it very cost competitive. In addition, the company has regulatory approvals from many agencies including the US FDA, EU GMP and KFDA which takes us head on with competition. In addition, the deal also supported our plans to quickly expand our Finished Dosage portfolio with the existing a high quality API manufacturing base,” he said.

While the Granules-Auctus deal is valued at Rs.1.20 crore, the Indian pharma sector in 2013 also reported the Torrent Pharma and Elder Pharma’s domestic business acquisition. However from mid 2008 the pharma industry in India was witness to some of the major buyouts by global pharma majors which were Ranbaxy-Daichii for $4.6 billion in June 2008, and Abbott- Piramal for $3.72 billion in September 2010, Strides’ sale of its specialties subsidiary, Agila Specialties to Mylan of $1.75 billion in January 2013 and Sanofi and Shanta Biotechnics in 2009 for $783 million.