Biocon has bagged the top slot in revenue generation and Mumbai has beaten Bangalore to become the leading biotech city in the country, reports the Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE)-BioSpectrum survey.

Mumbai has beaten Bangalore, with a small margin of about Rs 200 crore, to become India's Top Biotech City in terms of revenue while Bangalore-based biopharmaceuticals firm Biocon, known for insulin and cancer drugs had the highest revenue in 2009-10.

Biocon topped the Biospectrum-ABLE list of Top 20 Biotech Companies after a gap of four years growing at 29.34 per cent to record revenues of Rs 1180 crore.

The Indian biotech industry has grown three-fold in just 5 years to report revenues of US $3 billion in 2009-10, a growth of 17 per cent over the previous year, according to the 8th annual survey conducted jointly by the(ABLE and monthly journal, BioSpectrum, from the CyberMedia group based on inputs from over 150 biotech companies.

The biopharma sector contributed nearly three-fifth to industry's revenues at Rs 8829 crore a growth of 12 per cent followed by bioservices at Rs 2639 crore and bioagri at Rs 1936 crore. The remaining revenue came from the bioindustrials segment with a contribution of Rs 564 crore and bioinformatics at Rs 231 crore.

The sunrise sector earns a little more than half its revenue from exports. biopharma and bioservices sector contributed 63 per cent and 33 per cent to the total biotech exports respectively. The bioagriculture, bioindustrial and bioinformatics sectors remained focused on domestic operations bringing in nearly 90 per cent of their revenues from India.

The BioSpectrum study notes that the biotechnology ecosystem has become strong with technology providers and the biotech education sectors playing a key role.

While Biocon is the topper in the list, Pune-based Serum Institute of India, which produces one out of every two vaccines globally slipped to No 2 position with revenues of Rs 850 crore. Panacea Biotec, Nuziveedu Seeds and Reliance Life Sciences were ranked No 3, 4 and 5 respectively. The next 5 positions went to Quintiles, Rasi Seeds, NovoNordisk, Shantha Biotech and Mahyco.

Western India continued to dominate India's biotech industry with 46 per cent share in the overall revenues of Rs 14,199 crore. The 137 companies in the region clocked Rs 6,631 crore during the year increasing the region's share in the overall revenues by 3 per cent over 2008-09, thus gaining a lead of 6 per cent over South.

Gujarat's share in the total revenue grew by about 50 per cent to cross Rs 1100 crore.

Pune's contribution went down as Serum Institute of India suffered contract set backs. West is home to top bio-agri companies such as Monsanto, Mahyco and Ajeet Seeds and MNCs like GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Aventis Pharma, Wyeth, Quintiles. Four of India's top 10 services companies (CROs) are also based out of West, including the No 1 CRO in the Indian industry - Quintiles India (Rs 375 crore).

The southern India continues to remain India's largest biotech cluster in terms of the number of companies adding 9 new biotech companies, highest in the country during the year. The region has 172 biotech companies, compared to 137 companies in the West, which posted revenues of Rs 5537.68 crore during the year making up 39 per cent of the overall revenues.

The Northern biocluster has Panacea, Jubilant and Eli Lily, contributing 56 per cent of the revenues This cluster is better known for its research institutes and of course, government bodies.