The Indian pharmaceutical companies hope to strike a pot of gold by making cheap anti-AIDS drugs. This has triggered a price war that is likely to escalate in coming days.


The large number of AIDS cases has lured many companies to develop anti-AIDS drugs and market it in India and abroad by adapting innovative approaches to pricing.


The anti-AIDS drug market, currently dominated by Mumbai-based Cipla, witnessed the entry of four more pharmaceutical companies including Ranbaxy laboratories, GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals, Aurobindo Pharmaceuticals and Zydus Cadila in a short span of six months to one year.


The rising competition in the domestic anti-AIDS drug market has led to Cipla, a leader in the segment, cut its brand prices five to six times in the last three years. Thus, Cipla triggered a controversy by offering anti-AIDS drugs at a drastically lower prices.


Pharmaceutical companies in India are able to gain good healthy revenues, even if these anti-AIDS drugs are sold at steep discounts. India's patent laws currently protect only the processes by which drugs are made but not the products themselves.
