What Is IPM in Pharma? A Plain-English Guide

Every pharma report in India opens with a number: IPM grew 8.9% MAT. Every manager in your review meeting references it. And if you are new to the industry — as an MR aspirant, a pharma student, or someone who just joined a brand team — you have probably nodded along without fully understanding what that line actually measures. This explainer is for you.

What Is IPM? A Plain-English Definition

IPM stands for the Indian Pharmaceutical Market. It is the aggregate, rupee-denominated measure of prescription medicine sales flowing through retail chemists and stockists across India. Think of it as a running scoreboard for the entire domestic branded-generic prescription drug industry — updated every month, broken down by therapy, company, brand, and geography.

IPM does not capture hospital procurement, government tenders, or Janaushadhi generic store sales. It is focused on the retail prescription channel — the chemist shops where an MR’s detailing work ultimately converts into a dispensed prescription. That distinction matters enormously when you are reading field-force performance data.

Two organisations publish the data that the industry treats as the IPM benchmark:

IQVIA (formerly IMS Health) runs the Total Sales Audit (TSA) and the Market Feedback Report (MFR), drawing on a wide panel of stockists and retailers. It is the dominant source cited in investor presentations, analyst reports, and brand reviews across most large pharma companies.

AIOCD-AWACS (Pharmasofttech AWACS Pvt. Ltd.) runs the Secondary Sales Audit (SSA) and its PharmaTrac product. AIOCD-AWACS was formed as a joint venture between All Indian Origin Chemists & Distributors Ltd. and Pharmasofttech AWACS Pvt. Ltd., giving it direct access to chemist-level transaction data from the distribution network itself., giving it direct access to chemist-level transaction data from the distribution network itself. Its early-reporting advantage and granular stock-level detail have made it the preferred data source for many field-force and supply-chain decisions.

Both sources report on the same underlying market. Minor differences in their headline numbers — typically a few thousand crores — reflect differences in sample coverage and methodology, not fundamental disagreements about market direction.

How IPM Is Measured: Value, Volume, and MAT

IPM data is reported along three axes — what was sold (value vs. volume), over what period (monthly vs. MAT), and how fast it grew (year-on-year growth %). Understanding each axis is non-negotiable before you can read an IPM table correctly.

Value vs. Volume Growth

Value growth measures the change in rupee sales. Volume growth measures the change in units sold (tablets, strips, vials). The two can diverge sharply. In calendar year 2022, for instance, price-driven growth ran at 6% while volume growth was effectively zero — meaning companies were earning more rupees but not reaching more patients. More recently, volume growth has begun recovering: IQVIA data showed volume growth contributing 3.2 percentage points to IPM’s 10.7% MAT growth in May 2026, compared with just 0.8 percentage points a year earlier. For an MR, volume growth is the more honest signal of whether prescriptions are actually increasing on the ground.

IPM growth is also decomposed into three drivers: price growth (DPCO-linked annual revisions), new product introductions (NPI), and volume growth. A brand manager watching these three levers separately can tell whether her brand’s growth is sustainable or just riding a price hike.

What MAT Means — and Why It Matters More Than Monthly Sales

MAT stands for Moving Annual Total (sometimes called Moving Annual Turnover). It is the cumulative value of pharmaceutical sales over the immediately preceding 12 months, recalculated every month as the oldest month drops off and the newest month is added. A clean, practical definition: MAT Jun’25 = sales from Jul’24 to Jun’25.

Why does the industry prefer MAT over monthly sales? Because monthly numbers are noisy. A respiratory brand will spike in October–December (winter season) and dip in April–June. MAT smooths out those seasonal swings and gives you a truer read on whether a brand is genuinely growing or just riding a seasonal wave. As one IQVIA analysis puts it, MAT helps in “removing seasonal effects” to provide insights into true brand performance and market share.

When a manager says “our brand is at ₹120 crore MAT,” she means the brand sold ₹120 crore worth of product in the last 12 rolling months — not in the last calendar year, and not in a single month.

IPM at a Glance: Key Metrics Compared

Metric	What It Measures	Typical Use	Reported By
MAT Value (₹ Cr)	Total rupee sales in the rolling 12-month window	Market size, company rank, brand rank	IQVIA, AIOCD-AWACS
Monthly Value (₹ Cr)	Rupee sales in a single calendar month	Short-term pulse check, seasonal tracking	IQVIA MFR, AWACS PharmaTrac
MAT Value Growth (%)	Year-on-year % change in MAT value	Benchmarking brand vs. therapy vs. IPM	IQVIA, AIOCD-AWACS
Volume Growth (%)	Change in units (strips/vials) sold	Assessing real prescription uptake	IQVIA TSA
NPI Growth (%)	Sales contribution from new product introductions	Innovation pipeline impact	IQVIA, AWACS
Market Share (%)	Brand or company sales as % of therapy/IPM	Competitive positioning, MR target-setting	IQVIA, AIOCD-AWACS
TSA vs. SSA	Total Sales Audit (primary) vs. Secondary Sales Audit (retail)	Supply-chain vs. prescription-level analysis	IQVIA (TSA), AWACS (SSA)

To put the scale in context: IQVIA’s Q2 2025 quarterly report pegged the IPM at ₹61,000 crore for the quarter alone, with 9% growth over Q2 2024. On a MAT basis, independent estimates for early 2026 place the market between ₹2.40 and ₹2.50 lakh crore, depending on the data source and methodology used.

A Worked Example: Reading One Brand’s IPM Line

Theory lands best with a real table row. Here is how to read a single brand’s entry in a standard IPM report — the kind you will see in a monthly brand review or an analyst note.

Imagine the cardiac therapy table shows the following for a fictional statin brand, Cardistat:

Brand	Therapy	MAT Value (₹ Cr)	MAT Growth (%)	Monthly Value (₹ Cr)	Monthly Growth (%)	Market Share (%)
Cardistat	Cardiac	480	+12.0	42	+8.5	2.2

Here is how a trained reader unpacks that single row:

MAT Value ₹480 Cr: Cardistat sold ₹480 crore worth of product through retail chemists in the last 12 rolling months. This is the number your brand manager will use to rank the brand within the cardiac segment.

MAT Growth +12.0%: That ₹480 crore is 12% higher than the ₹428 crore the brand sold in the 12 months before. Now compare this against the cardiac therapy MAT growth — which, based on recent IQVIA data, has been running at roughly 10–11%. Cardistat is outperforming the therapy average. That is a green signal for the brand team and a talking point for the MR in the field.

Monthly Value ₹42 Cr / Monthly Growth +8.5%: In the most recent month, Cardistat sold ₹42 crore. Monthly growth (8.5%) is lower than MAT growth (12%), which may signal a slight slowdown in momentum — or simply a seasonal dip. One month does not make a trend; that is precisely why MAT exists.

Market Share 2.2%: Within the cardiac therapy segment, Cardistat holds 2.2% of value sales. If the segment is growing but Cardistat’s share is flat or declining, the brand is losing ground to competitors even while its absolute rupee sales rise. Share movement is often the sharpest early-warning signal for a brand team.

How MRs and Brand Managers Actually Use This Data

For a Medical Representative, IPM data translates into field-level targets and conversation ammunition. If the cardiac therapy is growing at 11% MAT nationally but your territory is delivering only 6% growth, your manager will flag it. Conversely, if your brand is growing at 15% in a therapy growing at 10%, you have a story to tell the doctor: more physicians across India are choosing this brand.

For a brand manager, the MAT table is a monthly report card. It answers: Are we growing faster than the therapy? Are we gaining or losing market share? Is our growth coming from volume (new prescriptions) or just from a price revision? These questions shape the next cycle’s detailing message, the promotional budget, and the new product launch calendar.

For a sales leader, IPM data feeds into territory design, MR target-setting, and the quarterly business review. Zone-level IPM data from IQVIA reveals that metros and Class 1 cities often grow differently from extra-urban markets — insights that directly inform how a field force is deployed. According to IQVIA’s Q2 2025 data, metros grew at 11% and Class 1 cities at 9%, while extra-urban markets grew at just 6% — a gap that has direct implications for territory prioritisation.

One structural trend worth internalising early in your career: chronic therapies consistently outpace acute therapies in IPM growth. Cardiac, anti-diabetic, and neuro/CNS segments have led the market for several consecutive years, while anti-infectives and respiratory (acute) have grown more modestly. As of MAT December 2025, IQVIA data showed chronic therapies growing at 12% versus 6.9% for acute therapies. This chronic-acute divergence shapes where companies are hiring MRs, where they are launching new brands, and which therapy areas offer the fastest career growth for early-stage professionals.

Frequently Asked Questions

Next Steps

IPM fluency is one of those skills that separates a confident first-year MR from one who is still catching up in review meetings. Once you can read a MAT table, track your brand’s share movement, and explain the chronic-acute split to a colleague, you are speaking the industry’s native language.

Pharmarketin.com publishes regular breakdowns of IPM trends, therapy-level analysis, and field-force strategy — all anchored to the Indian market context. If you found this explainer useful, explore our coverage on how field force effectiveness connects to brand performance and how data literacy is reshaping the skills pharma teams need. Both reads will give you the broader context for why IPM data is not just a reporting ritual — it is the foundation of every strategic decision in Indian pharma.

Have a question about reading your brand’s IPM numbers, or want to discuss how therapy trends are shaping field-force priorities in your segment? Reach out at connect@pharmarketin.com — we are always up for a practitioner-level conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does IPM stand for in pharma?

IPM stands for the Indian Pharmaceutical Market. It is the aggregate measure of prescription medicine sales through retail chemists and stockists across India, reported monthly by data firms like IQVIA and AIOCD-AWACS.

What is MAT in IPM reports?

MAT stands for Moving Annual Total (or Moving Annual Turnover). It is the total value of pharmaceutical sales over the immediately preceding 12 months, recalculated each month as the oldest month drops off and the newest is added. MAT smooths out seasonal fluctuations and is the standard benchmark for brand and therapy performance.

What is the difference between IQVIA and AIOCD-AWACS data?

Both IQVIA and AIOCD-AWACS measure the Indian Pharmaceutical Market, but they use different methodologies. IQVIA’s Total Sales Audit (TSA) is widely used in investor presentations and brand reviews. AIOCD-AWACS runs the Secondary Sales Audit (SSA) and its PharmaTrac product, drawing on direct chemist-level transaction data from the distribution network, which gives it an early-reporting advantage and granular stock-level detail.

Does IPM include hospital or government tender sales?

No. IPM primarily covers the retail prescription channel — chemist shops and stockists. It does not capture hospital procurement, government tender sales, or Janaushadhi generic store sales. This is an important distinction when comparing IPM figures with a company’s total domestic revenue.

Why do chronic therapies consistently outperform acute therapies in IPM growth?

Chronic therapies like cardiac, anti-diabetic, and neuro/CNS require long-term, repeat prescriptions, which creates a stable and growing revenue base as India’s disease burden shifts. Acute therapies like anti-infectives are episodic and more affected by seasonal variation and antibiotic stewardship trends. This structural shift has made chronic-heavy portfolios the preferred growth strategy for most Indian pharma companies.