IMS Health India recently launched a new sales audit–TSA (Total Sales Audit), which provides a 'complete and comprehensive' picture of the pharmaceutical industry. Upto now, IMS Health Information and Consulting Services India IMS Health India, which is a 100 per cent subsidiary of IMS Health, used to capture retail and hospital sales through the Stockist Secondary Audit (SSA) and Hospital Secondary Audit (HSA) respectively. But these two audits capture only around 85 per cent of the Indian pharma sales market.
The remaining slice of the pie is now available as a Doctor Sales Audit (DSA). A miniscule sales channel, that of speciality products like certain medications in nephrology and oncology, that are purchased by patients directly from stockists, as they are too expensive and require special storage conditions, to be stocked at sub-stockists, is still not captured.
All the data will be integrated into one single product and offered on one platform, with updates available on a monthly basis for all business segments. The TSA computed on MAT December 2010 data has some surprises for the industry, in terms of rankings (of companies and brands) and growth rates in different therapy areas. For the first time, industry analysts can compare growth rates of therapy areas across the three main pharma sales channels in India: retail, hospitals and doctors.
Giving more details, Sameer Savkur, managing director, IMS Health India, says, “This raises the worth of the total audited pharma market from Rs 46787 crore to Rs 54849 crore. While SSA contributes 85 per cent, HSA accounts for nine per cent and DSA for six per cent of the pie.” Comparing the SSA with the TSA, the latter has improved capture of certain therapies. For isntance the vaccines market capture improves by as much as 60 per cent, by Rs 490 crore.
New rankings
While the TSA and HSA rankings for the top seven companies show no changes, it’s interesting to note that GSK, at third position, is closing the gap between Ranbaxy at the second place, thanks to its hospital sales. In fact, GSK is number one in the HSA with Sun Pharma and Cipla coming second and third. GSK also tops the DSA, with Piramal Healthcare and Cipla at second and third positions respectively.
Among the top-20 companies the following improve their ranking as compared to SSA: sanofi aventis (+3), Pfizer (+1), and Micro Labs (+1). While Pfizer and sanofi aventis benefit on account of their strong hospital portfolio as well as vaccines business which provides them with a sizable franchise among doctors, Micro Labs moves up on account of its relatively stronger combined hospital and doctor sales (relative to others companies close to its ranking).
Companies who drop in rankings (in TSA as compared to SSA alone) as a result of the above changes are Mankind (-1), Aristo Pharma (-1), Intas Pharma (-1) and Dr Reddy’s Labs (-1).
