Mylan was recently chosen as the leading supplier of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to India's National AIDS Control Organization (NACO),a division of India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare that is responsible for overseeing HIV/AIDS control programs in India.

Mylan set up its India operations in August this year with the launch of a comprehensive portfolio of 18 antiretroviral (ARV) products for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. In an informative interaction with BioSpectrum, Mr Rajiv Malik, president, Mylan, talks about the firm's expansion plans, their strategy for garnering market share in ARV drugs, their strategic partnership with Biocon and much more. Following is an excerpt.

Mylan has been chosen as an ARV supplier to NACO. How will this impact your operations?
Mylan's mission is to provide the world's seven billion population with access to high quality medicine and from this perspective we are extremely excited to partner with an organizations like NACO as one of their key suppliers of ARVs. As one of the world's leading generics and specialty pharmaceutical companies, Mylan has a powerful global manufacturing presence, with capacity for more than 45 billion doses across our various products.

Today, approximately one-third of people in the developing world being treated for HIV/AIDS, depend on a Mylan products and we recently launched commercial operations in India with a broad portfolio of ARVs. Our very strong ARV manufacturing and supply chain network is well prepared to meet the needs of the Indian market and the NACO agreement, and we look forward to differentiating Mylan in this space through our quality, innovation and service.

What is the growth that you are expecting for this fiscal year? How well placed are Mylan's India operations as compared to other countries?
Mylan has provided guidance of $2.45-$2.55 in adjusted diluted earnings per share (EPS) for 2012 as compared to $2.04 for 2011) and a target of $2.75 in adjusted diluted earnings per share for 2013. We have also indicated that we intend to triple the adjusted diluted EPS to $6.00 by the end of 2018 and double the size of the company in terms of manufacturing capacity and product portfolio.

We identified India's commercial operations and ARV growth to be two important strategic drivers of this growth. At our investor day in February this year, we indicated that we expect revenues from ARV's to grow at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 13 percent from 2011-16 and aim to be a leading player in India.