India has made great strides in the biopharmaceutical industry. In the year 2008 the biopharmaceutical industry generated approximately $ 2 billion sales making it one of the largest biopharma segments in Asia.

Since the year 2005 the biopharma industry has been growing at a healthy rate. During the year 2005 to 2009 the industry witnessed an impressive CAGR of around 26.5 per cent and generated total revenue of Rs 121.4 billion (US $ 2.4 billion).

The Indian biopharma industry is growing at about 25-30 per cent every year. Recognizing historic changes occurring and for grabbing potential opportunities emerging in the country, all biopharm organizations in the world are  designing Indian as well as  Asian strategies.   

Currently the biopharma segment constitutes a major part of the total biotech market. It has experienced consistent rise in revenues and the trend is likely to continue in future as well. The future outlook of the overall biotech market remains buoyant despite the recent economic downturn.

The optimistic future projections have helped the sector to garner  investments to promote research and support entrepreneurship in the emerging segments.

While the export sales of Indian biopharma products are currently rising at an annual rate of 47 per cent, the  domestic sales of  biopharma products have risen only by 4-5 per cent per annum for the past few years. Hence it can be easily seen that the value of Indian biopharmaceutical exports is  double the value of its domestic sales.

The major contributor for the growth of biopharma sector in India is the vaccine sector. Vaccines are the largest and fastest growing sector in the country. Indian vaccines sales currently account for about 43 per cent of the country’s total biopharma sales compared to 16 per cent for the diagnostic and 13 per cent for therapeutics.

The sales of vaccines  have risen by 42 per cent from 2005-06 to 2006-07, compared to just 23 per cent for therapeutics and a five  per cent growth for diagnostics for the period. Today India is one of the world’s leading suppliers of measles vaccine and other vaccine products for children.

The Indian biopharma companies are increasingly manufacturing a wide range of products. These products include recombinant insulin, erythropoietin (EPO), G-CSF, recombinant hepatitis-B vaccine, streptokinase, interferon alpha-2b, rituximab, and an anti-EGFR monoclonal antibody product.