The FDI in biotech in 2021 touched $ 830 m a 6 % increase over 2020 ”
Gaining strength steadily
The biotech sector has seen an unprecedented growth of over CGAR 14 % in this challenging pandemic times and reached $ 80.12 billion by end of 2021-22 , nearly 49 % of this was the biopharma share with COVID related economy contributing approx 20 %. The Industry is now well positioned to achieve the projected value of $ 150 billion by 2025 . The share of Bioeconomy in the national GDP too has been rising in the last few years and now stands at 2.7 % against 2.2 % in 2019 . Over the last 8-10 years the number of start ups has exponentially risen from less than 500 in 2012 to over 5500 now . There were nearly 1128 new start ups established and a R & D investment of US $ 1 billion by the biotech Industry in 2021 . It is this growth trajectory , which gives us the confidence that with this sustained growth and the robust enabling ecosystem , India is in a position to achieve $ 300 billion by 2030 .
India ’ s Science & Technology based response to the pandemic has been phenomenal and has given our country an elated level of confidence to face future challenges . The successful S & T tools and technologies developed by the scientists in the country to fight COVID , have made the country not only self-reliant but also in a position to respond to the global needs . The successful Diagnostic story is an example of how in less than 60 days , the country moved from being fully import dependent to having indigenous capacities of over 10 lakh tests per day . Today we have the required competence and capacity to use new cutting edge
technologies to develop rapid , sensitive and specific diagnostics for other major diseases .
The country also saw one of its largest vaccine development programmes - Mission COVID Suraksha — developing the largest portfolio of vaccine candidates on different platform technologies - inactivated virus , mRNA , DNA , protein subunit , nasal vaccine and other new platform technologies . India which was known to be the world ’ s Vaccine manufacturer , has now been globally recognized as a strength in vaccine development . This was made possible through a very strong industry academia collaboration engaging a network of laboratories involving public and private sector and startups . An enabling robust ecosystem was built which provided access to clinical samples , validation assay panels , manufacturing capacity and market access . The country very quickly built its largest network of over 50 clinical trial sites , half a dozen animal facilities with challenge models for preclinical testing , more than half a dozen assay validation facilities with international recognition and 10 biorepositories of virus and clinical samples . Both backward and forward linkages were ensured to make the ecosystem ready for development and supply of indigenous raw material and large scale product manufacture . This ecosystem can now be used for further vaccine developmental research . This knowledge , experience and capacity is critical to accelerate the development of vaccines for priority diseases like Pan Coronavirus , TB , HIV , Malaria , Chikungunya , Zika and many others .
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BioVoiceNews | February 2023