Indian Biotech Industry

The Biotechnology sector in India is one of the fastest growing sectors of the Indian Economy. As the sector is mainly based on knowledge, it is expected that it will play an important part in shaping the Indian Economy, which is developing at a rapid pace. The products and services in the biotech sector in India cater across sub sectors such as biopharma, agricultural biotechnology, bio-industrial, bio-services and bioinformatics.

The products and services in the biotech sector in India cater across sub sectors such as: Biopharma Sector:

Biopharma market comprises primarily of vaccines, therapeutic drugs, insulin, animal biologicals, stations and diagnostics. The biopharma market accounted for roughly 61 percent of market share in 2010-11.

Bioservices Sector:

The bioservices sector clocked19 percent of the total biotech industry revenue in 2010-2011 registering a growth of 20 percent.

Bioagri Sector:

This accounts for 14 percent of the total biotech revenues.

Bio-industrial Sector:

The bioindustrial market in India clocked US$ 142.3 million in 2010-2011 and accounts roughly for 5 percent revenue in biotech industry.

Bioinformatics Sector:

This is the smallest segment contributing roughly 2 percent of the total industry revenue.

The Indian Biotechnology sector holds immense potential in terms of research and development, skill and cost effectiveness. The sector grew threefold in five years and reported revenue of US$ 3 billion during 2009-2010 with a 17 per cent rise as compared to the previous year. The quantum surge in terms of growth can be attributed to:

• Large pool of scientific talent.
• World-class information technology industry.
• Vibrant biopharmaceutical sector.
• Government initiatives, like setting up of more biotech parks and encouragement to public private-partnerships.

The state government initiatives over the past few years have resulted in developing Biotech industry clusters in state of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat and National Capital Region (NCR) which are major contributors for the industries revenue. Following is the distribution for their market share in 2010:

• Maharashtra (Mumbai and Pune): 35%
• Gujarat (Ahmedabad):8%
• Andhra Pradesh (Hyderabad):16%
• Karnataka (Bangalore): 20%

Following are the key facts for an overview of Indian biotech industry:

• Currently India’s share which is only $4 billion out of the $180 billion global biotech industry is negligible.
• The sector saw a growth of 30% in the last fiscal year, from $3 billion in the fiscal year 2009.
• According to a report by Frost and Sullivan (F&S), the size of the global biotechnology industry is set to reach $433 billion by 2015.
• The Indian biotech industry has to achieve the $10 billion mark in the next three years, the industry has to grow at more than 40%, year-on-year.
• Biopharmaceuticals contribute 62% of the Indian biotech industry.
• The Global biopharmaceutical market, which is worth about US$137 billion today, is expected to touch US$319 billion by 2020 according to industry estimates. Of this, the market share o Indian biopharmaceuticals is a miniscule 1.4 per cent (at around US$2 billion), even though it is recording a growth rate of over 30 per cent.

Some of the initiatives taken by both Central government and State governments that have provided a big boost to the Biotech industry in India are

• Setting up a venture capital fund, to support small and medium enterprises.
• Good regulatory framework has been set up for approval of GM crops and rDNA products.
• India has a sound and widely acknowledged framework of bio-safety guidelines to deal with evaluation, monitoring and release of genetically engineered organisms and there are more than 106 institutional bio-safety committees.

The setting up of a separate Department of Biotechnology (DBT), under the Ministry of Science and Technology, has been a significant move by the government. The department has been instrumental in accelerating the pace of development of biotechnology in the country in several ways. It has launched schemes to promote innovations in biotechnology in India like:

BIPP (Biotechnology Industry Partnership Programmes) for advanced technology.

It is a scheme focused on frontier technology for environment, health, agriculture bio-energy and bio-manufacturing. The scheme allows private industries to undertake research and share the related costs with public research centers, while retaining the intellectual property of the results, with re-payment of a royalty to the public institution. The scheme is reserved for Indian companies but Joint foreign partnership is eligible, provided the share of the latter does not exceed 49%

SBIRI (Small Business Innovation Research Industry)

A scheme to support innovation for the Small-Medium Enterprises of the biotech sector, with provision for grant of 80% of the total cost of the research project if it is below 2.5 million Indian Rupees, and 50% for any amount up to 10 million Rupees. Beyond this ceiling, it is possible to obtain an interest-free loan up to 5 million Rupees and 1% up to 10 million of Rupees.

BIRAC (Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council)

This has been activated to support and assist start-ups, especially SMEs, to catalyze biotech in the private sector and promote PPP projects.