India set to lead genomics revolution amid global patents expiry wave: Report
New Delhi, July 29
India is uniquely positioned to capitalise on a global genomics revolution and a looming $300 billion patent expiry wave that is driving an aggressive wave of biopharma acquisitions, a report said on Wednesday.
India hosts more WHO-certified pharmaceutical manufacturing plants than any other country on earth and for three decades, the model has been consistent science invented in the West, scaled and delivered by India, the report from Vallum Capital said.
The huge patent expiry wave will present Indian manufacturers with their largest growth windows and the medicines that are going to expire are not small molecules, but biologics, gene therapies and precision oncology drugs.
India is building capabilities in these fields through initiatives such as the Biopharma Shakti scheme and the Genome India Project mapping 10,000 genomes across 99 ethnic groups, the report said.
The firm noted India's domestic genomics market is growing at over 16 per cent annually and is actively building toward this moment.
Globally, artificial intelligence is compressing drug discovery timelines from a decade to under 18 months and clinical genomic data and machine learning are producing commercial revenue that validates faster development.
Across the genomics sector, companies are now using clinical genomic data to accelerate target identification at a scale no conventional research organisation could match.
Some platforms are running over a million biological experiments weekly using machine learning.
Biopharma M&A reached $106 billion across 201 deals in just the first half of 2026, on pace for the strongest full year since pre-pandemic.
In the first half of 2026, biotech IPOs raised more capital than the entire sector managed across all of 2025 a year when only 11 companies went public globally. Venture capital deployed into biotech hit $38 billion in 2025, up 28 per cent year-on-year.
— IANS
Reader Comments
As someone in biotech in the US, I'm watching India's moves closely. The patent cliff is real, and Indian companies with their cost-efficient manufacturing and now R&D capabilities could disrupt the global market. But regulatory approvals and IP protection need to be rock-solid.
This is exciting, but I hope we don't just become a manufacturing hub again. We need to build our own discovery pipeline and patent our innovations. The Biopharma Shakti scheme sounds promising, but let's see how much translates into real breakthroughs.
Impressive growth stats – 16% annual growth in genomics market and $38 billion VC in biotech globally. But India needs to tackle infrastructure gaps in sequencing and data storage. Also, ethical use of genomic data is a huge concern – privacy laws must keep pace.
This is the moment we've been waiting for! 30 years of being the world's pharmacy, and now we're moving up the value chain. The $300 billion patent cliff is our golden opportunity. Let's not waste it – we need more investment in PhD programmes and biotech parks. 🧬
I'm cautiously optimistic. The report mentions AI compressing drug discovery to 18 months – but are our regulatory bodies ready to approve AI-designed drugs? CDSCO needs to modernise fast. Also, we must ensure affordable access for our own citizens, not just export.
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