India is expected to grab at least 20-25 per cent of global market share in biosimilars in the next five years. With its highly established infrastructure, talent pool and high level quality compliance, the country is all set to become next hub for biosimilars beating China and Korea in the next few years, said Dr PV Appaji, director general of Pharmexcil.

At present China and India are leading as the major biosimilars providers from Asia. Though India is having a strong presence in the generic drug sector across the globe, the country is still lagging behind to grow as a biosimilars hub.

According to Dr Appaji, India has all the resources and talent pool to become the major biosimilars manufacturer in the world. In the next five years, India is expected to grab 20-25 per cent of global biosimilars market and may rank third or fourth place in the world in the biosimilars segment.

At present India’s global market share in biosimilars is very low. The country accounts for only about two to three per cent of the global biosimilars market. The reason for this low share is lack of investment and low funding in the Research and Development (R&D) segment. Many firms are now slowly realizing the importance and the potential the biosimilars markets holds and are coming out to invest in selective segments to gain maximum benefits.

Biosimilars are generic versions of biological medicines that depend on the same mechanism of action and are used for the same therapeutic indication as the innovator product.

At present the global markets for biosimilars is set at $580 million and is expected to grow to $10 billion by the year 2015.

There are four key areas for the Indian players to have considerable growth opportunities in the biosimilars segment. These include products space, services space, technology and applications. The product segment for biosimilars covers peptides, recombinant glycosylated proteins, recombinant non-glycosylated proteins and others. In service segment, the firms can look to gain in the areas of drug development, contract research, manufacturing services, clinical trials services, etc. And in technology space one can look for recombinant DNA technology, monoclonal antibodies technologies, protein sequencing, bioassay, chromatography, nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectrometry.

For the Indian firms to gain a big share in the global biosimilars arena they need to invest heavily in creating alliances and discoveries.

In view of this the upcoming BioAsia-2013 to be held in Hyderabad is also expected to give a big boost for Indian players to build partnerships and sign MoUs with the global players. With more than 250 firms from across the globe set to gather, the big event is all set to boost the future growth prospects of biosimilars market in India.