Drug Today: India's Ready Reckoner for Current Medical Formulations
Drug Today is a New Delhi-based pharmaceutical publication founded in 1993, best known as a comprehensive directory of drugs and formulations sold in India — described by its publishers as a leading health journal and by its users as a ready reckoner for current medical formulations. Where most medical journals publish research or news, Drug Today's core product is reference: the brands, compositions, prices and therapeutic categories of medicines available in the Indian market, organised so that a doctor, chemist or pharmacist can find, in moments, what a drug is, who makes it and what alternatives share its salt.
The publication comes from the Drug Today Group of Publications, established in 1993 by its founder chairman, Lalit Mishra. The group brings out two titles: Drug Today itself, the formulations directory, and Drug Today Medical Times, a monthly newspaper covering health and medicine from, as the group puts it, a 360-degree angle. Around those print titles the group has built an online presence and a mobile app, and the directory continues to appear in current editions — a two-volume issue covering April to July 2026 was on sale through Indian book channels — more than three decades after its founding.
Overview
Drug Today is the flagship publication of the Drug Today Group, based in New Delhi. Its own introduction describes it as a comprehensive directory on drugs and formulations that covers the latest updates on a range of drugs and formulations for the benefit of the pharma fraternity, and claims for it the standing of South Asia's most sought-after journal of its kind. Editions are identified by the period they cover — the April–July 2026 issue appeared in two volumes, in English, under the imprint Drug Today India, classed as a subscription periodical — reflecting the directory's cycle of revision as products enter and leave the market.
The publication's format follows its function. A formulations directory is consulted, not read through: entries must be findable by brand name, generic composition and therapeutic class, and current enough to trust on price and availability. Drug Today's reputation among chemists and practitioners rests on that utility — it has been called India's number one medicine formulation book and the ready reckoner for current medical formulations — and its long survival in a reference niche where accuracy is the entire product indicates that it has kept that trust.
History and Founding
The Drug Today Group was established in 1993 by its founder chairman, Mr Lalit Mishra, as a publishing house devoted to health and pharmaceutical titles. The group's introduction records that the chairman is assisted by Poonam Mishra, its director of marketing, who played a key role in bringing out many publications in the field of the pharmaceutical industry. From that base in Delhi — Mayur Vihar in the group's earlier listings, among the capital's publishing and distribution districts — the house built its two health journals and, later, its digital ventures.
The founding date places Drug Today in a specific moment of Indian pharmaceutical history: the early 1990s, when the Indian market's profusion of brands — thousands of formulations from hundreds of companies, many sharing the same generic salts — made a reliable, consolidated directory genuinely valuable to every chemist's shop and clinic. Before prescribing apps and online databases, a printed ready reckoner, revised through the year in yearly, monthly and quarterly cycles as listings describe the title, was how the trade kept track of what was actually available and at what price. Drug Today was built for that need, and the need, in evolving forms, has sustained it since.
Publisher and Ownership
The publisher is the Drug Today Group of Publications of New Delhi, founded and chaired by Lalit Mishra, with Poonam Mishra as director of marketing. The group's publishing identity in trade listings has also appeared as Lorina Publications — the batch records and pharma directory listings associate the title with Lorinal Publication (India) of Mayur Vihar Phase I, Delhi — a reminder that Indian trade publishing houses commonly operate through more than one imprint name across decades. What is consistent across the group's own statements is the two-title structure: Drug Today and Drug Today Medical Times, from one Delhi publishing house dating to 1993.
The group presents itself as a specialist house rather than a general publisher: its ventures are all in health and pharmaceuticals, and its later extensions — the medical times website and a pharma trading platform — stay within the sector. That specialisation supports the directory's claim to authority; a formulations reference must be maintained by people who track the drug market continuously, and the group's whole business is that tracking.
Editorial Content and Sections
Drug Today's core content is its formulations data: updated drug formulations, brand comparisons, therapeutic classifications and regulatory insights aligned with the Indian pharmaceutical ecosystem, as the group's own description of its print edition puts it. Entries set out the medicines available in the market with their rates and the other brands of the same salt or generic — the information a prescriber needs to choose between equivalents and a chemist needs to stock and dispense against a prescription written by brand name.
The print edition's editors emphasise applicability over theory: the directory reflects real-world prescribing patterns, and is curated and validated, the group states, by experienced medical journalists, pharmacologists and industry experts, with entries fact-checked and regulation-aware. Around this reference core, the group's second title supplies the narrative content: Drug Today Medical Times, a monthly newspaper, covers health and medicine broadly — news, developments and sector affairs — for health-conscious readers and the healthcare industry alike, serving, in the group's phrase, as a platform that safeguards the medical industry's core interests while guiding its service delivery.
Language and Readership
Drug Today is published in English, the professional language of Indian medicine and pharmacy, in which prescriptions, pharmacology teaching and drug regulation are all conducted. Its stated readership is the whole pharma fraternity and beyond: specialist doctors, general practitioners, chemists, pharmacists, nurses, patients and medical students use it, the group says, as their reference for the medicines available in the market. That breadth — from consultant to chemist's counter to the patient's home — distinguishes a formulations directory from a professional journal: anyone handling a medicine may need to check it.
The group's own commentary on its print edition refines the picture: for B.Pharm and medical students it functions as an academic companion that renders complex pharmacological data into accessible, exam-relevant formats without diluting rigour; for practitioners it is a rapid-reference system for time-critical decisions in clinics and hospitals; and in print it sits on the doctor's desk, the pharmacist's counter and the institutional library shelf, available without connectivity. A reference book recommended for every chemist shop — and, in one enthusiast's account, for every house, so that no one can be cheated on medicine prices — addresses a public as well as a profession.
Audience and Circulation
The audience divides into prescribers, dispensers and the trade. Doctors use the directory to check formulations, brands and prices before prescribing; chemists and pharmacists use it to identify equivalents and current rates; medical representatives and pharmaceutical marketers use it to know the competitive field of brands sharing a molecule; and students use it to learn the market reality behind their pharmacology syllabus. The group's claim that the title is rated the best medical journal of its kind and is very popular among those groups is the language of a house confident in its niche.
Circulation is by subscription and book trade sale. Pharma magazine listings class Drug Today as appearing in yearly, monthly and quarterly forms — the directory's revision rhythm — and current editions are sold through mainstream e-commerce: the April–July 2026 two-volume set was listed on Flipkart as a magazine subscription title in English, with a printed price of Rs. 499. That a 1993 directory still issues dated, purchasable volumes in 2026 is the simplest evidence of continuing demand for a consolidated printed record of Indian formulations.
Print and Digital Editions
Print is the title's foundation, and the group argues for it explicitly: the print edition delivers authority, structure and clinical relevance in a form that allows distraction-free reference, quick annotation and long-term retention on a desk or counter, without dependence on connectivity. In clinics and pharmacies where the book is a working tool, those are practical virtues, and the directory's two-volume bulk — the 2026 edition runs to volumes I and II for a four-month period — is a measure of how much market data it carries.
Digital extends rather than replaces it. The group maintains drugtodayonline.com as its web home, with medical news and the titles' presence online; Drug Today Medical Times has its own website carrying the latest updates on health and medicine; a mobile app is listed among the title's channels in trade directories; and the group introduced drugtodaydeal.com to assist its pharma readership in the purchase and sale of bulk drugs and in developing and promoting websites — a diversification into the trade's digital services, keeping pace, as the group says, with the digital boom.
Drug Today Medical Times and the Group's Other Ventures
The group's second title gives the house its journalistic voice. Drug Today Medical Times is described by the group as a leading health journal and monthly newspaper dedicated to health and medicine, catering to the health-conscious as well as the healthcare sector, covering its field from a 360-degree angle. Where Drug Today the directory is a reference tool, the Medical Times is reading matter — health news and medicine coverage for a general professional audience — and it carries the group's online news presence through its own website.
Together the two titles cover the two ways the pharma community consumes information: lookup and reading. The directory answers the question of the moment — what is this drug, what does it cost, what else contains this salt — while the newspaper keeps its readers current with the sector around them. The group's additional venture into a bulk-drug trading and web-services platform shows the same logic extended into commerce, using the trust of a thirty-year-old title to intermediate the trade it has always documented.
Credibility and Clinical Use
A formulations directory lives or dies on trust, because its users act on its data in clinical and commercial settings. The group addresses this directly: its print edition material is developed and validated by experienced medical journalists, pharmacologists and industry experts, every entry fact-checked, regulation-compliant and clinically sound — necessary assurances in a sector where, as the group notes, misinformation carries real risk. Its descriptions of the title as a precision tool actively used in medical decision-making across India, and a rapid-reference system supporting accurate, time-critical choices, stake the publication's identity on that reliability.
The directory's longevity is itself a credibility signal. Reference publishing punishes error quickly: a chemist burned by a wrong price or a discontinued brand stops renewing. That Drug Today has continued from 1993 to current 2026 editions, retaining its ready-reckoner reputation among doctors, chemists, pharmacists and students, indicates a maintenance operation — tracking launches, revisions and regulatory change across the Indian market — that has kept pace with one of the world's most complex pharmaceutical markets.
Recent Developments
The title's recent activity centres on continuity in print and presence online. Current editions of the directory — the April to July 2026 volumes I and II of Current Medical Formulations — are in the market through online booksellers, the group's websites carry features arguing the continuing case for the print edition among healthcare professionals, pharmacists, students and policy stakeholders, and Drug Today Medical Times maintains its own news website. The group's company profiles list a Delhi team hiring in media and healthcare publishing in recent years, consistent with an active small publishing house rather than a dormant imprint.
Thirty-three years after its founding, Drug Today remains what it was built to be: the book on the chemist's counter and the doctor's desk that answers what medicines exist in India, in what brands and at what prices. In a market that adds formulations constantly, that question never goes out of date — and neither, so far, has the ready reckoner that answers it.
Place in Indian Pharmaceutical Publishing
Indian pharmaceutical publishing divides into research journals, trade news titles and reference works; Drug Today belongs to the third category and is among its best-known names. Its competitors and companions are other directories and indexes of medical specialties, but Drug Today's combination of formulations data, brand-and-price comparison and sheer longevity since 1993 gives it a distinct standing — closer to an institution of the chemist's shop than to a magazine in the ordinary sense.
Its story also records a phase of Indian publishing: a Delhi house founded in 1993, built on print reference, extending into a monthly health newspaper, websites, an app and a trading platform as the market digitised, yet still issuing the printed directory at the centre of it all. For the pharma fraternity it serves, Drug Today is less a periodical than a piece of professional equipment — which is precisely what its publishers set out to make it.
