Here's How Homegrown Pill Dolo 650 Rose To Fame Amidst India's Third Wave

Here's How Homegrown Pill Dolo 650 Rose To Fame Amidst India's Third Wave

If someone told us a couple of years ago that an oval white pill was going to become a near life-saver in the midst of a deadly pandemic, we could’ve easily laughed it off for its sheer absurdity. Yet nearly two years in, we continue to witness the curveballs that this virus is throwing at us.

As the pandemic continues to evolve and adapt, we Indians too have found fascinating mechanisms to cope with the same. With the emergence of the rapidly transmissible Omicron variant, India is now gaping at a ‘tsunami of cases’ driven by this very variant.

The daily caseload does not seem to plateau anytime soon and as infections surmount and double in a matter of days, India is witnessing a massive yet precedented demand for OTC medication.

Paracetamols, vitamin supplements, cough syrup, and painkillers are amongst the common medications prescribed for patients suffering from a mild case of the new coronavirus variant. While pharmacy shelves are being wiped out by the hour, a homegrown paracetamol brand, Dolo 650 is emerging as the country’s most consumed tablet.

Fever being one of the most common symptoms of a COVID infection has enabled the Indian brand’s sales to skyrocket in the last two years, particularly in the last few months. Dolo 650 has clocked sales of Rs. 567 crores since the onset of the pandemic making it India’s go-to drug.

An article by The Logical Indian also reveals that if all the 350 crore tablets sold were to be stacked together, vertically, it would be nearly 6000 times as tall as Mount Everest and 63,000 times higher than the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa!

The tablet which is manufactured by Micro Labs Ltd. in Bengaluru had established its regional dominance over its competitors Crocin and Calpol far before the pandemic. It was only in the wake of the first lockdown that the difference in consumer choices was significant.

Why Dolo?

Paracetamol is primarily a salt that suppresses a fever from rising and also doubles as a painkiller. Dolo 650 in this aspect, is no different than its medicinal counterparts, Crocin, Calpol, Pacimol, and so on.

The only plausible reasons attributed to the brand’s success is its popularity amongst the medical practitioners who prescribe it and the presence of very minimal side effects, making it an easy-to-consume drug for all patients, including those suffering from co-morbidities.

Its success is also linked to how interchangeable brand names become with the product itself. For instance Bisleri and Xerox which have been household names for canned water and photocopier machine respectively. Following a similar trend, this fortune appeared to strike Dolo 650 as a brand as compared to the other paracetamols.

A Meme-Fest

Social media dictates and drives trends both online and off. Memes have become an effective means of communicating a collective emotion. If the third wave is driven by the Omicron variant in the real world, it is the Dolo 650 miracle that is driving it online.

As cases began to rise starting mid-December last year, so did the internet memes. An increased consumption of Dolo 650 by netizens compelled them to share their experience online, creating brief moments of light-hearted humour in these turbulent times.

This did not just stop there, Dolo 650 has also been titled as the ‘most googled drug’ during these two years of the pandemic while #Dolo650 has continued to trend on Twitter for nearly a week now.

In a line that we never thought we would say, a single pill is uniting the country in the face of a pandemic and here we are; experiencing the taste of our own medicine and sharing it with the world.

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