You can’t imagine our surprise today when we saw that Pfizer has announced that it will license injectable and solid dosage forms from Aurobindo. We wrote about Pfizer’s new generics strategy on monday, but we definitely didn’t expect this. If you had asked people in the industry ten years ago whether this would happen, most people would have laughed you out the room.

According to Reuters, “Pfizer will gain rights to 38 pills in the United States and 20 in Europe as well as an additional 11 in France…coveringa broad range of therapy areas including cardiovascular disease and central nervous system disorders”.

Reuters also quotes Pfizer as saying that the deal involved “strict quality controls, including allowing Pfizer to have its employees in the Aurobindo plant during production runs for Pfizer”. That’s probably a very good idea considering that Aurobindo is not exactly known as the quality leader within the industry.

The funniest thing about this whole story was Pfizer’s comment that even though they were going into generics, they would not “deteriorate Pfizer’s margin standards”. Aha, how exactly do you plan to do that ? Pfizer will see soon enough that in generics, they’re not the only pony in town.

This deal smells of desperation on Pfizer’s part but lots of congratulations to Aurobindo for landing such an amazing deal ahead of its competitors.