Formation
Ranbaxy was started by Ranbir Singh and Gurbax Singh in 1937 as a distributor for a Japanese company Shionogi. The name Ranbaxy is a combination of the names of its first owners Ranbir and Gurbax. Bhai Mohan Singh bought the company in 1952 from his cousins Ranbir and Gurbax. After Bhai Mohan Singh's son Parvinder Singh joined the company in 1967, the company saw an increase in scale. His sons Malvinder Mohan Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh sold the company to the Japanese company Daiichi Sankyo in June 2008.
[edit] Trading
In 1998, Ranbaxy entered the United States, the world's largest pharmaceuticals market and now the biggest market for Ranbaxy, accounting for 28% of Ranbaxy's sales in 2005.[citation needed]
For the twelve months ending on 31 December 2005, the company's global sales were at US $1,178 million with overseas markets accounting for 75% of global sales (USA: 28%, Europe: 17%, Brazil, Russia, and China: 29%). For the twelve months ending on December 31, 2006, the company's global sales were at US $1,300 million.
Most of Ranbaxy's products are manufactured by license from foreign pharmaceutical developers, though a significant percentage of their products are off-patent drugs that are manufactured and distributed without licensing from the original manufacturer because the patents on such drugs have expired.
In December 2005, Ranbaxy's shares were hit hard by a patent ruling disallowing production of its own version of Pfizer's cholesterol-cutting drug Lipitor, which has annual sales of more than $10 billion.[3] In June 2008, Ranbaxy settled the patent dispute with Pfizer allowing them to sell Atorvastatin Calcium, the generic version of Lipitor(R)and Atorvastatin Calcium-Amylodipine Besylate, the generic version of Pfizer's Caduet(R) in the US starting November 30, 2011. The settlement also resolved several other disputes in other countries.[citation needed]
On 23 June 2006, Ranbaxy received from the United States Food &