Ten Million US Dollars....

and no takers! That is the approximate market size for a niche medication and no one's interested! Has it occured to you that there are no pain killers for expectant mothers? What happens when expectant mothers get bad headaches, backaches, migraines or they just hurt themselves? They have to just sit and wait for the pain to subside naturally!

You must be wondering what I am babbling about. Let me explain. I have seen an expectant mother suffer from severe pain for the past four days. She cannot take any of the pain killers available as they might harm the baby. That made me wonder about the lack of pain killers for this niche market.

I tried to come up with a ball park estimate of the market size. Considering the world market is futile as the size of the market probably does not justify the logistics & marketing costs. So let's confine ourselves to China, India and Pakistan markets and regional pharma companies.

Number of births in 2006 in these three countries - 48,088,444
Assume only the top 40% can afford medicines(pessimistic) - 19,235,378
Discounting for multiple babies/mother, expectant mothers - 17,311,840 (90% of above)
Expectant mothers who suffer from some kind of pain - 12,983,880 ( 75% of above)
Average number of tablets/person over 9 months(pessimistic) - 5
Total Tablets sold - 64,919,399
Price of tablet (US $) - 0.1
Market Size (US $) - 6,491,940
(All birth statistics have been gleaned from public domain)

Please remember that I have assumed that only the top 40% of population would be able to afford medication which is truly pessimistic. The assumed average number of tablets per person over nine months is also small, it can easily be double that number. The price can be higher as it is a niche market and in the absence of any other alternative, the willingness to pay may be significantly higher! I have assumed a price of Rs.4 per tablet. I would readily pay double that amount.

Looking at all this, the market size is between US$ 6.5 -10 Million. This market can be easily expanded to include kids, senior citizens. Yet, there are no takers!!