The rupee hit its weakest ever against the US dollar on May 10, breaching the 77 mark for the first time. That gave stocks of IT companies a boost as software exporters rely heavily on exports, and weakness in the currency increases the money they make on every dollar earned.

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But shares in pharma companies — another exports-heavy sector — did not get the kind of upmove enjoyed by IT stocks.

Tanushree Banerjee, co-head of research at Equitymaster, said the pharma sector is far more regulated than the IT sector.

"Pharma companies cannot always take the benefit of currency rates on their pricing power. For the pharma sector, the possibility of US FDA (the US drug regulator) inspections etc. plays a big role in determining the sector's prospects both in the near and long term," she told CNBCTV18.com.

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The COVID effect

"One needs to understand that pharma sales are down for the past few months, after the boost provided by the problem of COVID in the past two years... Growth in pharma businesses is feeling the heat of this change. The pricing power will be there, but the boom due to the pandemic has subsided," AK Prabhakar, head of research at IDBI Capital Markets, told CNBCTV18.com.

He sees Sun Pharma as the biggest beneficiary of rupee depreciation, followed by Gland and Cipla.

"As the pandemic has receded, the exceptional growth seen in acute therapies may not be repeated (stellar double-digit growth for anti-infectives coming down)," Anand Rathi said in a report dated May 9.

The brokerage is of the view that chronic illness-driven companies would have better opportunities to grow as COVID is now past domestically. "Demand footfalls for dermatology and gynacology have started to pick up," it said.

Anand Rathi maintained its positive view on Pfizer India, Eris, Torrent, and Ajanta.

The rise in select software stocks helped the Nifty IT eke out a small gain on May 9 amid a broad sell-off in the market, as the rupee sank to its all-time low against the greenback. The Nifty Pharma, though off the day's low, failed to make it to the green.

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