Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world, people's lifestyles and habits changed significantly. The pandemic is still not over, and people are still fighting the deadly COVID-19 virus. With no cure for the virus, treating the early symptoms like fever, pain and cold became people's first aid. And in doing so, Dolo 650 emerged India's favourite paracetamol brand to treat fever, headache or body pain. Wondering what makes us say so? Read on.

If one thing every Indian household had during the pandemic was a strip of Dolo 650 on standby. Since the pandemic broke in 2020, India has sold over 350 crore Dolo 650 tablets. That's right!

To give you a perspective of what it might be like, stacking up 350 crore Dolo 650 tablets vertically will be 6,000 times as tall as the Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, or about 63,000 times the height of Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building. That familiar 1.5cm-long pill was sold more than Crocin, which was largely believed to be the go-to fever drug, in the last two years.

Indians bought 350 crore Dolo 650 during pandemic; sales skyrocketed like never before

Dolo 650 in numbers

As per data by research firm IQVIA, India sold 7.5 crore strips of Dolo tablets before the COVID-19 outbreak in 2019. But as demand for fever drug grew, 14.5 crore strips or 217 crore tablets were pushed off the Pharma shelves by November 2021.

This demand has put Dolo in the second spot, right behind GSK's Calpol for the most sold anti-fever and analgesic tablet in India. Dolo's turnover is pegged at Rs 307 crore in 2021, whereas Calpol was slightly ahead at Rs 310 crore. Crocin comes right below in the list with Rs 23.6 crore turnover.

Not jus the sales, Dolo also became the most-googled medicine in the country. In fact, Dolo 650 was most-searched keyword in Google with around 2 lakh searches since the COVID outbreak. Even Calpol was no match for Dolo 650 in this category.

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The Dolo 650's dominance on the internet grew so much that there were memes going around on social media. You can search Dolo 650 on Twitter and be entertained with a flurry of hilarious memes that talks about the drug's supremacy.

Dolo 650

Dolo 650 is a brand drug for paracetamol, much like Crocin or Calpol. Its road to fame has a lot more to do with it just being an anti-fever drug. The short brand name, and the 650MG category worked in its favour. Popularised as Dolo 650, people started to perceive the tablet as more effective than the 500mg counterparts. Dolo 650 is developed by Bengaluru-based Micro labs, which was founded in 1973.