A second Indian pharmaceutical company, Torrent Pharmaceuticals Ltd., has announced that it also is selling a generic version of the new Sanofi-Aventis diet drug Acomplia (rimonabant) under the name Rimoslim.

The news, which attracted little attention in the West, occurred almost simultaneously with last week's announcement by Zydus Cadila, an Indian manufacturer of generic drugs headed by one of the country's richest men, that it has launched a generic version of rimonabant under the name Slimona.

Torrent said Rimoslim has undergone clinical trials at Torrent Pharma’s world-class advanced R&D Centre and that the trial conducted on more than 200 patients showed encouraging results.

“Our studies show that Rimonabant group caused average weight reduction of around 6 kilos in the first few weeks. We are convinced that this is by far the best therapy for obesity," said Dr. Prasanna Kumar, an endocrinologist from Bangalore.

Ruchir Modi, Vice-President- Marketing of Torrent, said Rioslim was being priced at about 8 rupees per tablet (less than U.S. 20 cents).

"Thus, it’s an extremely affordable therapy for the masses unlike the others that service only the niche, upwardly-mobile population." Modi said.

Torrent Pharma, the former Trinity Laboratories, is the flagship company of the Torrent Group and says its Research Centre employs more than 600 scientists in the areas of drug discovery and development.

The Indian obesity drug market is estimated to only total US$50 million a year, but is reported to have grown by 44 percent in the past year. The Economic Times reported that a Nutrition Foundation of Indian (NFI) study estimated that 45 percent of women and 29 percent of men in urban India are overweight

Exactly how Indian pharmaceutical companies are already launching generic versions of Acomplia -- a novel drug which hasn't even made it to the market yet in the United States -- remains something of a mystery.

India only two years ago enacted new patent legislation as a condition for joining the World Trade Organization which most observers believed would make it more difficult for Indian companies that make generics to copy drugs in the future.