Juneja: Low drug prices make government Jan Aushadhi pharmacy franchises commercially unviable
Rajiv Juneja · Two Pharma Giants Who'd Never Met | Mankind & Dr. Reddy's | WTF is Pharma? · Nikhil Kamath · Jun 17, 2026 · at 1:01:03
Rajiv Juneja (Vice Chairman & MD of Mankind Pharma) analyzes the retail unit economics for operators of Indian government-subsidized generic pharmacy stores (Jan Aushadhi).
0:00 / 0:34exact quote · 34.6s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Because if you sell something at a very cheap price, to run that Jan Ojdi, is a problem. You can look, if your daily sale is say, for example, 2000 rupees, what will you earn out of that? You need to have at least 50,001 lakh rupees sales daily. Then you earn 10%. In general, usually, the profit of margin for the person who is running is also very low. One, the MRP is low. The second, you sell huge quantity, but the value per se is less, and percentage to that guy is also less.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Rajiv Juneja
Juneja: Weak regulation leads to heavy metals like lead in Ayurvedic drugs
“The purity is an issue, actually. And a lot of time when regulatory is not very, very strong there are complaints of, I'll say, adding certain other things in that. For example, in this in some of the drugs, lead has been found.”
Juneja: Halting Chinese intermediate supplies would spark an Indian antibiotic crisis
“A lot of antibiotics are there. In the absence of Chinese supply, we can come into a crisis.”
Juneja: Mankind Pharma intentionally caps EBITDA at 26% to fuel growth
“See, I mean, it depends upon, I mean, if you just look at mankind, our EBITDA is always in between 25, 26%.
Intentionally.
Because we just want to grow faster.
We spend more.
We can increase it.”
Juneja: Ayurvedic doctors lose patients if they prescribe only slow-acting Ayurvedic remedies
“If a patient is coming to him, and if he prescribes only Ayurveda product, the patient will not come back to him. Because patient needs what? Instant relief. Faster relief.”
Juneja: Mankind will use semaglutide as a frontend to cross-sell lifestyle supplements
“So what our philosophy is, along with this, our focus would be on supplements. I mean, this would be front end, but actually, we will be selling the complete lifestyle. Protein, supplements, vitamins, other requirements. The complete, I mean, chain, the ecosys…”