Can GLP-1 generics fix India’s obesity epidemic, which goes beyond body size?

Mukta Dhond has a new monthly ritual. “I have to take my 20 pairs of jeans to the tailor for size alterations,” says the 49-year-old Mumbai-based television producer.

A single mother who has been battling obesity for a large part of her life, she decided it was time for a transformation when during a Scotland vacation with her toddler son in 2024, she was left gasping after a steep climb. Dhond was a pre-diabetic then. “He would run up the hills and I would be far behind. I realised it was time to change things,” she recalls. From weighing 117 kg in March 2025, when she started her GLP-1 journey with Ozempic, Dhond is at 95 kg today. She points to a feeling of reinvention and liberation — a “game-changer”, in her words.