Indian pharma market ‘impossible to ignore'

India's huge potential as a market cannot be ignored

A new report by consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers says that India will become one of the top ten sales markets by 2020.

PwC has found that India’s population and economy is continuing to grow rapidly that, in turn, is combining to create a large middle-class able to afford western medicines. According to the report, the total market is expected to rise to a value of approximately $50 billion by 2020.

PwC believes this gives the Indian pharma market “huge” potential, making it “impossible for foreign companies to ignore”. 

India’s epidemiological profile is also changing and the population is ageing, so demand is likely to increase for drugs for cardio-vascular problems, disorders of the central nervous system and other chronic diseases such as diabetes that is increasing at a high rate.

The report highlights that India now has a growing and increasingly sophisticated pharmaceutical industry of its own. It is likely to become a competitor of global pharma in some key areas, and a potential partner in others. It has considerable contract manufacturing expertise - Indian companies are among the world leaders in the production of vaccines.

India also produces more than 20% of the world’s generics. With around $70 billion worth of drugs going off patent in the US over the next three years, PwC thinks that India is capable of manufacturing a substantial share of the product to support the resulting generics opportunities.

Sharat Bansal, pharmaceutical and life sciences leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers in India, said that: “India has long been a formidable player in pharmaceutical manufacturing, but its socioeconomic strengths provide even greater grounds for optimism.”

Bansal continued: “Companies that will be most successful in doing business in India will be those that are most adept at managing and mixing a range of contractual relationships and partnership strategies to create networks of collaboration and discovery. India has huge potential and is at a stage that it can help the industry address some of the issues that it finds itself dealing with in more developed markets.”