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Hyderabad : “It’s the Infosys moment,” says Annaswamy Vaidheesh, a pharmaceutical industry stalwart and executive Chairperson, Suven Pharma, one of India’s fastest-growing players in the CDMO (contract development and manufacturing organization) sector. Backed by private equity player Advent International, Suven has built a wide spectrum of research and manufacturing capabilities.
Vaidheesh was speaking at a panel discussion at the second edition of Next Gen LabCon, a conference organized by ET Pharma at Hyderabad that saw a convergence of leading industry experts. The discussions ranged from tapping global opportunities, a fast-widening scope of Gen AI in drug discovery, emerging use of digital tools and Electronic Batch Records for fool-proof quality and regulatory compliance and how green chemistry must be adopted for environment sustainability.
Speaking on how Indian CDMO sector is set for a big jump, Vaidheesh remarked what was seen with the IT services industries in India in late eighties or early nineties and the way they (IT sector) professionalized, modernized, scaled up the businesses, we may expect to see that to happen in the Indian pharmaceutical services industry in the next decade and beyond.
Having led GSK’s India operations in the past and taken up key roles at J&J, Vaidheesh is sanguine given that global drug makers are keenly looking for strong partners to outsource critical functions to accelerate their drug research. The global small molecules CDMO industry is at approximately USD30 billion and as per estimates, it is expected to grow at about 7% to 8% over the next few years. “India is expected to grow twice as fast as the global growth rate,” he says.
But for the next big leap, Vaidheesh has a few caveats. “The industry doesn’t have the talent to deal with this explosion,” he cautions, adding that is where China had an edge a decade ago. It invested in academic institutions, brought in industry knowledge from global companies and built companies that have now turned into global giants. Vaidheesh added the manufacturing talent in India is seeing an acute shortage and that needs to solutions.
Sauri Gudlavalleti, COO, Sai Life Sciences agreed with that point. He said that while the Indian talent in chemistry research has seen global acceptance over the last many years, there needs to be a higher flow of specific knowledge and skills to understand the pain points of partners to meet their future demand. It is a validation that most large CDMOs in India have partnerships with global companies that have at least one or two commercialized drugs.
KVS Ram Rao, CEO, Granules India and an industry veteran who has groomed a bunch of industry leaders noted the growth of the industry places India at a formidable position on the global map. He reminded the use of modern technologies like green chemistry will determine the best in the game.
Akhil Ravi, CEO, Aurigene Pharmaceutical Services, a subsidiary of Dr. Reddy’s Labs said the future growth in India’s CDMO business may not come just from partnerships with large pharmaceutical and biotech drug makers. He noted that over 8000 drugs are estimated to be in the clinics and labs and a good chunk of that may be coming from smaller groups of scientists or emerging companies. That itself forms a strong potential for Indian drug makers to build research alliances.
Notably, the entire small molecules business or the overall CDMO services industry in India is roughly USD2 billion and that is lower than WuXi’s USD3 billion turnover.
