Dr Reddys Laboratories is planning to spend upto USD 300 million on research and development (R&D) during this financial year, a senior official of the company has said. President, CFO and global head (HR) of Dr Reddy's Saumen Chakraborty, during an 'earnings call', said the drug- maker spent USD 226 million during the last fiscal against USD 264 million in FY 18. The R&D spend for the quarter (January-March FY 19) is Rs 366 crore, that is USD 53 million and EBIT 9.19 per cent of the sales for the quarter, he said.

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The spend is lowered by 16 per cent year-on-year and is flat on a sequential quarter basis. The spend for FY 19 is Rs 1,551 crore. That is USD 226 million as against USD 264 million in FY 18, Chakraborty said. "We expect the overall R&D for FY 20 would be in the range of USD 250 million to USD 300 million," he said replying to a query. The company would continue to focus on R&D for some interesting pipeline of proprietary products. But, on an overall basis, the R&D spend would be lower in proprietary products when compared to previous year, he further said.

Speaking at the meeting, chief operating officer of the company Erez Israeli said, "Now that we made the R&D organisation more efficient andcould handle more products with less cost, we want to continue with this plan of productivity to increase the R&D in order to ensure no fallbacks and no differentiated products."

Replying to a query, Israeli said the company during FY 20 expects to launch more than 30 products in the US market.