The Rise and Rise of Indian Bio-Pharma

A little known fact: India is one of the largest suppliers of vaccines in the world? "We provide 60-70% of the world's vaccines!" says Dr Renu Swarup, Secretary of the Department of Biotechnology and Chairperson of BIRAC.

Speaking to FIT about India's rising biotech industry, she tells me about one of our "inherent strengths": bio-pharma.

At the Global Bio-India Summit, a three-day international conference in Delhi, Dr Swarup says,

“India is growing very well in this whole bio-tech sector. In the last two years it has been around 14%, which is a huge encouragement. But we are still not there as much in the global market, currently we stand at just 3% of the global market.”

Dr Renu Swarup

One of the huge steps taken in these years has been in the building of a robust eco-system for innovations, although she admits, “We do have to address challenges of human resources,

Building up India's Bio-Pharma

Bio-pharma is a subset of pharmaceuticals that looks at technology that is rooted in biology. It’s an exciting field of research and innovation, and the global bio-tech market is estimated to grow to $721.1 billion by 2025.

The obvious question that arose then was what advancements were made and what new we could expect from our home-grown medical experts.

But Dr Swarup cleared up my misconceptions about the way this works, saying, "The bio-pharma mission is very uniquely positioned. It's a mission which is not looking at seeding new innovations but instead, it is looking at taking forward or seeding the innovations which have been developed by DBT and BIRAC and other agencies where the funding pipeline has been created."

So the main aim? "To bring these exisiting innovations closer to market!"

“We have vaccines, we have biosimillars (drugs), we have medical devices. These were made after a lot of consulation, looking at our disease burden, gap areas, and seeing which areas need government intervention.”

Dr Renu Swarup

Besides product availability, another vertical in bio-pharma is creating a conducive eco-system for medical innovations which means space for shared resources. "Right now, academic researches have to go to CROs but many times they don't have access to better infrastructure because its either too expensive or too far. So we have made shared infrastructure available."

These exist across the country.

“In the last couple of years we have supported many projects, mainly a number of vaccines which are under development. For some of these, we have even looked at early stage development. Vaccines for cholera, dengue, chickengunia and those which are important under the Universal Healthcare Scheme.”

Dr Renu Swarup

Most of these have a wide market appeal, and Dr Swarup tells me accessibility and reaching the most number of people is the aim.

“Through foccusing on these vaccines and developing bio-similars we are really hoping a large number of people will be benefited and our market will be enhanced as well.”

Dr Renu Swarup

"We have always had inherent strengths in vaccine manufacturing," she says and now is the time to leverage and build upon this. "There is a huge market for this, in other developing nations and the world."

Products with the largest relevance make the most sense, and Dr Swarup mentions that they work with Ayushman Bharat as well to "see how they reach the last mile, the last person."

Does this also mean mHealth and digital healthcare? "This is the way forward, and it reaches the most people in the fastest way. We are innovating in diagnosing people via the internet,

The industry is also looking to improve medical devices and using cutting edge technology. And with streamlining multiple stakeholders, the hope is to make the existing innovations reach us faster.