Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks sees bigger India role in global drug innovation

As American pharma giant Eli Lilly expands its India footprint, including in obesity and cardiometabolic disease, CEO Dave Ricks said India can play a bigger role in the global development of medicines, moving beyond its traditional strength in manufacturing.

“India has the opportunity to move beyond being the Pharmacy of the World and emerge as an Innovation Partner to the World, where breakthrough medicines are not only manufactured, but also discovered, developed and scaled for patients everywhere,” Ricks said on October 1 at Bharat Life Sciences Awards in New Delhi.

Lilly is already deepening its presence in the country as it builds its business around cardiometabolic medicines. The company launched Mounjaro (tirzepatide) in India in 2025 for type 2 diabetes and chronic weight management and later partnered with Cipla for the distribution and promotion of tirzepatide.

The company’s global obesity portfolio is also moving well beyond Mounjaro. At the EASD 2026 meeting in Milan, Lilly is presenting new data on retatrutide, its experimental three-hormone obesity drug, Foundayo (orforglipron), its once-daily oral GLP-1 medicine, and EloraTZP, a combination of eloralintide and tirzepatide.

The data point to Lilly’s push to offer patients different ways of treating obesity. In a late-stage study, people with obesity and type 2 diabetes taking the highest dose of retatrutide lost an average of 20.8% of their body weight over 80 weeks. Ricks said the results reinforce the potential of the drug.

“Retatrutide continues to demonstrate the potential to be a transformational medicine for people living with obesity and related conditions,” Ricks said.

The company is also advancing an oral option. New data on Foundayo showed that the once-daily pill helped people with type 2 diabetes reduce blood sugar and body weight. Ricks said the results support the potential of an oral GLP-1 option for people who may prefer a pill.

“The potential of an oral GLP-1 that can deliver meaningful weight loss and glycemic control could be an important option for people living with obesity and type 2 diabetes,” he said.

Lilly is also testing combinations to push weight loss further. Its latest data on EloraTZP showed greater weight loss than tirzepatide alone, with the company planning late-stage studies of the combination.

The growing pipeline is relevant for India, where Lilly is expanding beyond selling medicines to building capabilities in technology and research. The company has been present in India for more than three decades and has more than 4,000 employees across the country.

Ricks said India has the scientific talent to contribute to the next generation of medicines, with ideas potentially coming from universities, startups and research institutions.

“The next transformative idea can emerge from a university laboratory, a startup founder, a research institute, or an entrepreneur pursuing a challenge that others may have overlooked,” he said.

He said Lilly’s role would be to help connect such ideas with the expertise, capabilities and partnerships needed to take them forward.

“Our responsibility is to help advance those ideas by connecting them with the expertise, capabilities, and partnerships that can help them reach their full potential, he added.

For that to happen, Ricks further said India would need to encourage scientific risk-taking and bring researchers, innovators and industry closer together.