Indian bio-pharma industry is valued at Rs 7,883 crore and is registering 14.25 per cent annual growth. The sector accounts for 65 per cent of the total biotech sector which is valued at Rs 12, 137 crore, according to the Association of Biotechnology Led Entrepreneurs and Biospectrum survey.
The bio pharmaceuticals sector continues to grow, stated Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairman and managing director, Biocon Limited and chairperson Vision Group on Karnataka.
Emerging markets is certainly a strong focus now with many global biopharma companies. Emerging markets are seen to be the highest growth opportunities and this is really about addressing stagnating topline growth amongst companies. Late stage asset acquisition is another very interesting trend. This is, again, to address the declining pipelines and filling them up with late stage assets that can accelerate time to market, stated Shaw at the J P Morgan Healthcare Conference held at San Francisco early this month.
One of the biggest risk that the industry is addressing is about the increasing risks and costs associated with drug development. And here, industry is beginning to experiment with new risk sharing models. Co-development is an interesting strategy. Outsourcing R&D services to reduce cost is another way of looking at cost mitigation in drug innovation, she added.
India has a handful of dedicated bio-pharma companies which manufacture using fermentation process known as monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) which primarily include cancer drugs, insulin, growth hormones, and cell culture to produce vaccines. While Biocon is the largest in the space with range of bio-pharma products gearing a revenue of Rs 100 crore to its total turnover of Rs 1,739 crore. The other companies are Panacea Biotech, Novo Nordisk, Shanta Biotech, Jubilant, Bharat Biotech, Indian Immunologicals, Bharat Serums, Themis Medicare, Concord Biotech, Intas Biopharma, GSK, Wockhardt, Serum International, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories and Aventis.
The bio-pharma sector has been largely start-up ventures. Until five years ago venture capital funding was the only source of funding to boost growth plans. But now the Union government has come out with several schemes to give a fillip to the bio-pharma sector. It has allocated funds to promote growth through its initiatives like Biotech Industry Partnership Programme (BIPP), Biotech Industry Research Assistance Programme (BIRAP) along with the Small Business Innovation Research Initiative (SBIRI) scheme to boost public-private-partnership effort and New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative (NMITLI) financial assistance schemes. These funding initiatives would provide platform to boost the growth of the sector.
Indian biotech sector has reached an inflection point as it is close to achieving the US$ 5 billion mark and targets US$ 10 billion in 2015.Going by the scientific expertise here in the country, there is room for intellectual capital and a requirement for smart and low cost innovations. In order to have an edge in the competitive international arena, there is need for affordable targeted therapies and faster diagnostic devices. Therefore Indian biotech companies need to work to exhibit their capabilities to develop drugs and devices of sustainable commercial value that could attract investors, said Shaw.