Cipla joins hands with Russian generic major Teva

The country's second largest drug firm Cipla has been in favour of alliances to grow its footprint. It has joined hands with the world's largest generic company Teva to sell its products in certain markets. This alliance could turn out to be the most critical for Cipla, reports CNBC-TV18's Archana Shukla.

The partnership, which begins for the Russian market, sees Teva provide the marketing muscle to sell Cipla's key inhaler brand Seroflo. Seroflo is the generic version of GSK's USD 8 billion combination inhaler brand Advair.

This move gives Cipla a stronger presence in the USD 20 million Russian inhaler market, a country where Cipla already has a tie-up with Dr Reddy's Labs to sell prescription drugs.

Sources say Cipla is also in talks to expand this partnership to other respiratory products and other markets, especially in Europe.

Analysts approve. They say given Teva's formidable marketing presence across Europe, especially in the respiratory therapies segment, Cipla will get access to the region's USD 3-billion plus inhaler market.

The alliance may get stronger down the road, when Cipla launches 11 CFC-free inhaler products in Europe over the next 2-3 years, especially once Cipla gets EU approval for Seroflo. But till then, Cipla's 4 approved mono-inhalers will continue to sell in UK, Germany, Spain and Portugal, and Teva could help there as well.

But since Teva is also building its own pipeline of mono and combination inhalers, including generic Advair, it may restrict the Cipla tie-up to just the smaller markets. But  even then, for Cipla whose overall inhaler capacity is estimated to be amongst the top five globally, this partnership with Teva could prove to be a winning combination.