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Biotech/Biopharma
H: Biotech/Biopharma
Key Findings:
• India’s biotech sector is growing, as both markets and R&D expand.
• Bay Area biotech firms use India for trials/testing/research.
• Indian biopharma is shifting from outsourced research to deeper partnerships.
India, already a powerhouse in the generic pharmaceuticals sector, is also emerging as a significant
player in biotech and biopharma, the biotech industry’s largest segment. There are approximately
350 biotech companies in India today, with revenues of $2.5 billion and roughly 30,000
employees. With growth in the sector historically having averaged 35–40% per year (between
2002 and 2007)), revenues are expected to reach $5 billion by 2010. The Associated Chambers
of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) predicts that the number of biotech firms
in India will double to 600.
The sector is essentially distributed between biopharma, agricultural biotech (e.g., bio seeds), bio-
IT (bioinformatics including data management), and industrial biotech. For now, India’s pureplay
biotech sector is nascent and principally based in Bangalore, which also serves as home to
the National Institute for Biological Science, the Indian Institute of Science, and other research
institutes. Most Indian entrepreneurs remain focused on IT, which is where the largest pool of
investment dollars are available, but this may change over time as national and global health
markets expand and fields such as genomics accelerate the global hunt for talent.
Biotech in India is rooted in the growing domestic market and in the country’s strong base in
pharmaceuticals. A June 2008 report by the Kauffman Foundation, “The Globalization of
Innovation: Pharmaceuticals” tracks the global spread of the pharmaceuticals market. While the
global market share of the top 10 pharmaceuticals firms peaked in 2005 at 42% before easing to
38% in 2007, the emerging markets share of global industry sales more than doubled between
2001 and 2006, from 13% to 27%. India’s market share in 2007 was about 4%. A 2007 survey by
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) suggests that industry executives see the center of gravity of the
global pharmaceuticals market shifting from Europe and North America to Asia. Asian markets,
including India, are therefore is seen as critical to capturing global market share.
Global outsourcing is now extending beyond manufacturing to biotech, as mass communication,
low-cost computing and the quest for global talent have led to:
• licensing of component products and research, or complete drugs, from India;
• research partnerships between global majors and Indian firms (discovery research), with
cost and risk sharing as well as joint ownership of intellectual property;
• the emergence of contract research organizations (CROs) that conduct research and
clinical trials for specific stages of drug discovery, development, or testing;
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