GLP-1 Awareness

GLP-1-based medicines include semaglutide, sold as Ozempic and Wegovy, and tirzepatide, sold as Mounjaro. These medicines can treat type 2 diabetes or help with weight management, depending on the product and its approved use. Commercially they have arrived. In May 2026, the month after this survey closed, Eli Lilly's Mounjaro was the top-selling brand by value in the Indian pharmaceutical market, at ₹109 crore for the month (Pharmarack data, reported by BioSpectrum India, 15 June 2026).

Awareness in this survey was low despite that commercial scale. WHI 2026 asked one question about these medicines, and 26.1% of the 6,968 answers reported any awareness of them. More than half, 54.4%, said they had never heard of them at all. There is no comparable GLP-1 awareness measure in the 2025 edition.

What the survey asked#

The question was: "How aware are you of GLP-1 weight loss medications (e.g., Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy)?" Respondents chose one of six answers, and the six are mutually exclusive. Someone who selected "I've used or am currently using one" did not also select "I've considered using one".

The awareness figure on this page is the sum of the last four rows: 1,817 responses, 26.1%. Consideration and use together are the last two rows: 250 responses, 3.6%.

Two of those rows describe different states. 9.0% selected "I know what they are and how they work". A larger group, 13.5%, selected "I've heard the name but don't know much", which is what that option says: recognition, without detail. Most of what registers as GLP-1 awareness in this sample, 939 of the 1,817 responses, is the second kind. Each figure on this page is the option a respondent selected: not a knowledge test, and not a behaviour this survey observed.

The survey is from an IT-heavy insured sample.

Consideration or use is almost four times as common among those reporting diabetes or hypertension#

The survey asks separately whether a doctor has diagnosed the respondent with diabetes and whether one has diagnosed hypertension. The diagnosed group includes anyone reporting either condition. This grouping describes reported diagnoses; it does not identify who needs a GLP-1 medicine.

Consideration or use runs almost four times higher where a diagnosis exists, 10.6% against 2.7%. Both figures are rates inside their own group. Of the 250 responses reporting consideration or use, 81 fall in the diagnosed group and 167 in the comparison group, with the remaining two among the responses excluded from both.

In the diagnosed group, 37.3% reported some awareness of these drugs, compared with 24.7% in the comparison group. Nearly half of the diagnosed group (48.9%) had never heard of them, and 13.8% preferred not to say. Mounjaro became the country's top-selling brand by value the month after the survey closed.

Diagnoses are self-reported, and the diabetes question does not distinguish type 1 from type 2. Reporting neither diagnosis does not mean having no health condition or establish treatment eligibility.

Awareness doubles at the top of the income scale, and barely moves below ₹10 lakh#

From ₹10–15 lakh upwards the share rises in every band and more than doubles, from 25.9% to 54.0%. The survey average of 26.1% is crossed between ₹10–15 lakh and ₹15–25 lakh. Below ₹10 lakh the three bands sit within four points of each other, and the lowest band sits slightly above the one immediately above it.

Nothing in this survey measures why anyone had or had not heard of these medicines. The highest band rests on 137 responses. The income gradient itself echoes what the Income & Job Role page finds across screening and supplementation.

Women report more awareness; men report more consideration or use across ages 20–59#

The two columns run in opposite directions. Women report higher awareness than men of the same age in all four bands, and men report higher consideration or use than women of the same age in all four. Across this cut as a whole, awareness is 32.6% among women and 22.9% among men, a gap of 9.7 points, while consideration or use is 2.8% among women and 3.8% among men.

Awareness also climbs with age among women, from 31.2% in their 20s to 42.3% in their 50s, and is flat among men, within 3.6 points across the same four bands. Women in their 50s are the smallest cell in the table, at 78 responses, and men in their 50s the second smallest, at 136. Pooled across genders the four age bands run 25.9%, 24.8%, 29.3% and 29.9% from the 20s to the 50s, a 5.1-point spread with the two youngest bands lowest, so the pooled reading is nearly flat while the two genders move apart. No cut of this survey crosses gender with income, industry or work arrangement, so none of these figures is adjusted for those. The Gender Divide page carries the survey's other gender cuts.

People who work from home report awareness 9.9 points above people who work from an office, with hybrid between them.

Among industries with 100 or more responses, consulting leads awareness#

The top and bottom listed industries are 25.3 points apart. Awareness broadly follows the income pattern, though this survey does not cross industry with income. Industry here means the employer's sector, not the respondent's job.

Weight regain after treatment stops makes long-term care important#

What a GLP-1 is approved to treat is narrower than the conversation around it. Under current US prescribing information, Ozempic is approved to control blood sugar in type 2 diabetes, for reducing major adverse cardiovascular events in adults with type 2 diabetes and established cardiovascular disease, and for kidney outcomes in type 2 diabetes with chronic kidney disease. Mounjaro is approved for type 2 diabetes and for reducing major adverse cardiovascular events in adults with type 2 diabetes at high risk of them. For adults, Wegovy is approved for weight reduction and long-term maintenance with obesity, or overweight and a weight-related condition. It also has approval for cardiovascular risk reduction in adults with established cardiovascular disease and either obesity or overweight. Its injection has accelerated approval for adults with MASH, a form of fatty liver disease with inflammation, and moderate to advanced liver scarring but no cirrhosis. Zepbound is approved for weight management in adults with obesity, or overweight and a weight-related condition, and for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnoea in adults with obesity. These weight-management uses accompany a reduced-calorie diet and increased activity. A result in the prediabetes range is not, on its own, an approved indication in any of those labels. That matters for anyone reading this page next to WHI 2026's blood sugar findings, which come from a separate dataset of laboratory reports over a different period and cannot be matched to these survey responses at the level of a person.

Those are US approvals, and what each brand may be prescribed for in India is set by its Indian label rather than the American one. What is settled for India is the route to a prescription. These medicines are not sold over the counter, and the Government of India's guidance of 1 April 2026 states that they may be prescribed only by endocrinologists, internal medicine specialists and cardiologists. The Drug Controller General of India, with state drug controllers, issued an advisory to manufacturers on 10 March 2026 against promotion that encourages use without a prescription, and has audited and inspected 49 businesses including online pharmacy warehouses, wholesalers, retailers and weight-loss clinics, issuing notices where it found violations.

Outside a trial, most people in the two-year real-world analysis this page cites did not stay on the drug. Prime Therapeutics and Magellan Rx followed 3,364 commercially insured US adults with an obesity diagnosis and no diabetes who started a GLP-1 in 2021: 47.1% were still on it at 180 days, 28.9% at one year and 14.8% at two years (Prime Therapeutics/MRx, 10 July 2024). That is a US commercial claims population, 81.0% women, taking these drugs for obesity rather than diabetes. Its rates are not an Indian discontinuation rate, and not one for people prescribed a GLP-1 for diabetes.

The cardiovascular benefit is real and it is specific. The SELECT trial randomised 17,604 people aged 45 or over who had existing cardiovascular disease and a BMI of 27 or above, and no history of diabetes, to weekly semaglutide 2.4 mg or placebo. Its primary endpoint was a combined outcome of cardiovascular death, non-fatal heart attack or non-fatal stroke, and that endpoint occurred in 6.5% of the semaglutide group against 8.0% on placebo over a mean 39.8 months of follow-up, a hazard ratio of 0.80 (Lincoff et al., New England Journal of Medicine, 2023). That is a result for one drug, on one composite endpoint, in people who already have cardiovascular disease.

Find out who can write the prescription before you design a benefit#