I hate popping pills. Especially if something needs to be taken regularly. All sorts of pills have taken a foothold into our lives. Pills for blood pressure, diabetes, fat burn, protein supplements, and so on and so forth. It is like someone controlling our lives, and you can do nothing about it.
A magic pill that can cure anything is just what we are looking for. Though I hate pills, I love the pharma business. It is here to stay, and it is here to grow. Exponentially.
Here is a curious case of the Dolo-650
The one magic pill for fever, body aches, general weakness, or anything which causes you discomfort, is not there.
But the belief is: if you're not really sure of what caused it.... take a Dolo! It might just help you.
Or so, some of us believe. Yours truly included. I've popped a Dolo in the past year like so many others.
With Covid raging, the only over-the-counter drug that seemed always available, readily trusted, and used was Dolo. I was surprised how it became a household name in India.
I tried purchasing generic paracetamol when my mother was having a bout of Covid in 2020. I was told to only trust the one highly effective paracetamol, by the local pharmacist - "Dolo".
When you need medicines for your family, you don't typically bargain on price, you go by what works.
If the guy selling medicines says it works, you tend to believe him and pay a premium (50% more than the generic 500 mg Paracetamol).
I decided to dig a little deeper after the incident. It turned out to be a very interesting case indeed. I wanted to write on this topic since last year but kept putting it off. Well.. I've got to write it now.
I recently read an article on Micro Labs in Fortune and it triggered back what I had researched myself.
Micro Labs (a privately held company based in Bangalore), was one of the many manufacturers of the common paracetamol. Their foray seemed quite unspectacular until the mid-90s. They were one of the many paracetamol manufacturers in the already crowded space.
Their "Aha!" moment came up when they differentiated their product by introducing a rather queer product size. The 650 mg Paracetamol product, christened "Dolo-650".
All Paracetamol products were sold in the standard 500 mg packaging.
The brilliant idea of a 650 mg dosage was the result of focusing on the small set of people who really needed to take a dose of paracetamol due to high fever!
Most people with light fever tried not to take pills. High fever warranted a higher dosage, and an extra 150 mg really helped!
Anyway, where is the growth?
Though Dolo was an effective fever reducer, it was a fairly steady product that sold a million strips (of 10 tablets) every year until 2019 for the Suranas (the family that owned Micro Labs).
All that changed, when Covid hit. I read estimates that they sold 3.5 Billion pills during Covid and are growing rapidly in high double digits YoY since.
They seemed to have now cornered a crowded generic paracetamol market with a slightly differentiated, modestly innovative product.
Dolo is no longer a paracetamol 650 mg pill, it has got a brand of its own.
Paracetamol in India is now called "Dolo". This seems like the Xerox moment for them. A photocopier even today is called a Xerox machine.
What got me really interested, is the philosophy of the Surana family (Dilip Surana) in a recent interview which I want to summarize here:
- Differentiation and branding (in this case, with medical advisors and doctors)
- Consistent quality
- Consistent messaging
Nobody can predict when exponential growth can hit in, but it was interesting to see a small domestic manufacturer corner a commodity market in the face of strong overseas competition (GSK) which had 10X more firepower.
Indian Pharma is ripe for more 10X's - I wonder who is next? The search will always continue.
I just wanted to stop by, and tell you the unexplained story of "Dolo", the magic pill!
