Daijiworld Media Network - New Delhi
New Delhi, Jul 29: India is well placed to benefit from the global genomics revolution and an impending $300 billion patent expiry wave that is expected to trigger a surge in biopharma acquisitions, according to a report released on Wednesday.
The report by Vallum Capital said India hosts more World Health Organization (WHO)-certified pharmaceutical manufacturing plants than any other country. For the past three decades, the country's pharmaceutical sector has largely focused on manufacturing and supplying medicines developed in the West at scale.
It noted that the upcoming patent expiries represent one of the biggest growth opportunities for Indian drug manufacturers, as many of the medicines losing patent protection are biologics, gene therapies and precision oncology drugs rather than conventional small-molecule medicines.
India is steadily building capabilities in these advanced areas through initiatives such as the Biopharma Shakti scheme and the Genome India Project, which aims to map 10,000 genomes across 99 ethnic groups.
According to the report, India's domestic genomics market is expanding at an annual rate of more than 16 per cent, positioning the country to tap into future opportunities in precision medicine and biotechnology.
Globally, artificial intelligence is significantly reducing drug discovery timelines from nearly a decade to less than 18 months. The report said clinical genomic data combined with machine learning is enabling faster identification of drug targets and accelerating commercial drug development.
Several genomics platforms are now conducting more than one million biological experiments every week using machine learning, a scale that conventional research organisations cannot match.
The report also highlighted strong investor interest in the sector. Global biopharma mergers and acquisitions touched $106 billion across 201 deals during the first half of 2026, putting the industry on track for its strongest annual performance since before the pandemic.
Biotechnology initial public offerings (IPOs) in the first half of 2026 raised more capital than the entire sector did in 2025, when only 11 biotech companies went public worldwide. Venture capital investment in the biotechnology sector reached $38 billion in 2025, marking a 28 per cent increase over the previous year.