India will emerge as a leading player in the global pharmaceutical market within a span of next five years. The factors contributing to this are its chemical manufacturing excellence, presence of the largest number of US FDA approved plants outside USA, a large pool of English-speaking scientific manpower and its success in information technology, according to Dr. Arvind Mathur, manager, external resources, Bristol-Myers Squibb.
He was speaking at the conference on "Opportunities in Life Science Molecules," Global Partnership Summit hosted by Frost & Sullivan.

He said, though India lags behind in the research end of the business, it is making efforts to overcome this with the help of multinational companies in the country. The increasing number of research co-development projects with global pharma majors has been helping Indian scientists polish their drug discovery skills.

India's progress will also be aided by the pace of skill sets being developed in research and development and reverse brain drain from US and Europe. Backed by experience and expertise, these scientists, who will be employed in MNCs, will provide the much-needed fillip to the Indian drug development scene.

The changes in the country are now taking a positive turn with the intellectual property rights regime. This will make MNCs more comfortable in entering research outsourcing. There is also an emergence of scientific entrepreneurs, stated Dr. Mathur of BMS, which is looking at India to outsource research and partner in molecule development.