From 365 Pricks To 52 A Year: Novo Nordisk Brings Once-A-Week Insulin At Rs 2,600 Per Pen

Published 9 July 2026 · local

From 365 Pricks To 52 A Year: Novo Nordisk Brings Once-A-Week Insulin At Rs 2,600 Per Pen Reported By, Edited By Last Updated: July 09

From 365 Pricks To 52 A Year: Novo Nordisk Brings Once-A-Week Insulin At Rs 2,600 Per Pen Reported By, Edited By Last Updated: July 09, 2026, 12:10 IST Awiqli will be priced at Rs 2,611 for a disposable FlexTouch pen containing 700 units, which works out to roughly Rs 37.8 per unit. Rapid Read The company on Thursday launched Awiqli – derived from the word “a weekly” – in India, and the drug is likely to be available at pharmacies starting Friday, 10 July. (AI generated image) For a person living with diabetes, the day often begins with a needle – needing at least 365 shots of insulin in a year. Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk has found a way to cut that number down to just 52 with the launch of the world’s first “once-weekly basal insulin". The company on Thursday launched Awiqli – derived from the word “a weekly" – in India, and the drug is likely to be available at pharmacies starting Friday, 10 July. Vikrant Shrotriya, managing director of Novo Nordisk India, told News18 in an exclusive interview that, “The launch of Awiqli is a watershed moment for the company," he said. “Instead of 365 injections a year, to start with foreign insulin initiation, somebody just has to take 52 injections." The company has launched Awiqli at Rs 2611 for 700 units, claiming that the pricing is 25 to 35 per cent cheaper on average than modern second-generation insulin. With over 100 million diabetics and another 130 million pre-diabetics, India is one of the largest markets for the Danish drugmaker. “It is in the top 10 — I don’t shy away from saying that," Shrotriya said of India’s importance to Novo Nordisk globally, pointing to the company’s manufacturing and R&D presence in Bengaluru, its foundation office at IIT Delhi, and its regional holding office in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex as evidence of long-term commitment beyond the commercial business. How Is Once-A-Week Insulin Important For India? Shrotriya believes that this insulin solves the problem of human reluctance and hesitation in accepting insulin. Despite a century of insulin therapy and multiple generations of increasingly refined molecules, India still struggles to get patients onto insulin when they need it — and to keep them there. “Many of the treatments, availability of so many of the treatments, we still do not have ideal HbA1c control of the glucose," he said. “Primarily, one of the reasons is that people deny early insulin. By the time they take insulin, it’s 8 or 9 years late.

It has been studied that 93 per cent of patients would not like to take insulin injections, and in fact, even the physicians have the same hesitancy." That delay is not a small thing, Shrotriya warns. By the time many patients finally begin insulin therapy, he said, close to half of the beta cells that would have secreted the hormone naturally are already lost — a quiet, irreversible cost of procrastination that both patients and doctors are complicit in. The numbers back him up. Data from the Family Health Survey-6 (2023-24) shows that 20.9 per cent of Indian men aged 15 and above now have high blood sugar or are on medication for it, up from 15.6 per cent just a few years earlier in NFHS-5 (2019-21). Among women, the figure has climbed to 17.8 per cent from 13.5 per cent over the same period. India is already home to over 101 million people living with diabetes, and another 136 million sit just one step behind them with prediabetes — a population large enough to reshape the country’s public health priorities for a generation. What Actually Happens Inside The Body The science behind Awiqli traces back to a discovery from the 1950s, when scientists, including Frederick Sanger, who first sequenced insulin’s amino acid structure, opened the door to modifying the hormone itself rather than just its delivery. Novo Nordisk has altered three amino acid positions on the insulin chain and attached a fatty acid to one end — changes that extend the drug’s effective half-life to more than 190 hours, according to Shrotriya. That modified molecule binds reversibly to albumin, a protein in the blood, and releases slowly over days rather than hours, which is what allows a single injection to cover an entire week. “Time in range, that means insulin coverage, is very good. HbA1c control is very good," Shrotriya said, adding that the risk of hypoglycaemia — the low-blood-sugar episodes patients fear most — remains “as good or as bad" as with existing insulins, despite the far longer coverage window. The claims rest on the ONWARDS clinical programme, six phase 3a trials that together studied more than 4,000 patients globally, including participants in India. Novo Nordisk says all six trials met their primary endpoints, and that Awiqli demonstrated superior HbA1c reduction and improved time in range compared with once-daily glargine U100, without any added safety trade-off. Pricing: The Part That Decides India’s Story Innovation is one thing, but getting a price-sensitive market like India to adopt it is another altogether, and Shrotriya was candid that the company has learned this lesson over four decades of operating in the country.