The biosciences revenue of the Indian BioSuppliers market touched Rs 10053 crore in 2020-21 registering growth of 16 per cent over previous year’s figure of Rs 8666 crore in 2019-20. The market had registered 9 per cent growth in 2019-20 as against 6 per cent growth recorded in 2018-19 with the biosciences revenue of the Indian BioSuppliers market touching Rs 7500 crore.  

This significant growth of the supplier industry was mainly driven by an unexpected rise and spread of COVID-19 during 2020-21. This has created a whole lot of business opportunities and growth for biosuppliers as India, a key vaccine manufacturer of the world, took the lead in developing indigenous vaccines against COVID-19 and also their contract manufacturing.

The government has also supported the companies with grants and funds for research and development of kits, vaccines and expansion of their business operations. The budgetary support announced by the government in the Union Budget 2020 also helped the industry to grow during the year.

In 2019-20, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) received an allocation of Rs 64,559 crore. This allocation is an increase of 15.2 per cent over the revised estimates of 2018-19 (Rs 56,045 crore).

There are over 100 leading companies in the analytical instruments space in the country who are dominating the space supported by hundreds of distributors/ channel partners spread across the country. Only a handful of companies are doing very well with sales revenue of over Rs 250 crore.

Most biosuppliers have a sales revenue of less than Rs 50 crore. Western India, comprising Maharashtra (Mumbai, Pune) and Gujarat (Ahmedabad) is a leading hub for biosuppliers companies followed by South India (Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai) and northern region (New Delhi).

All the top 50 global analytical instruments companies have a direct or indirect presence in the country.  They include Thermo Fisher, Agilent, Danaher, Illumina, Merck, Waters, Shimadzu, PerkinElmer, Bruker, Mettler-Toledo, Becton Dickinson, QIAGEN, GE, ZEISS, Bio-Rad, Hitachi, JEOL, AMETEK, Roche, Sartorius Eppendorf, Olympus, Spectris, Nikon, Tecan, Rigaku , Promega, Anton Paar, HORIBA, Oxford Instruments,  Metrohm,  Avantor, Luminex, Dassault Systèmes (BIOVIA), FOSS, JASCO,  Xylem, ITW, Takara Bio, Roper, MTS, Endress+Hauser, TOSOH, LECO, Hanna Instruments, Zwick Roell, Parker Hannifin, Teledyne and LabWare. Some of leading distributors in the country include Spinco Biotech, Lab India, Imperial Life Sciences, Toshvin Analytical, DSS Imagetech, Genetix Biotech Asia, Labmate Asia, Premas Life Sciences, among others.

Besides there are hundreds of small and medium size companies who have been in the business in India catering to the different requirements in public and private sectors comprising of academia, pharma and biotech companies, contract/ clinical research organisations (CROs) etc.

India still depending on the import of all kinds of analytical instruments as it is still unable to develop and manufacture these kind of high end precision equipment unlike in case of vaccines, biosimilars and blood products. However Indian companies are very much active in supplying lab consumables, kits, reagents, lab equipment, cell culture media and lab chemicals. 

BioSpectrum brings to you Top 20 BioSuppliers for FY20-21

Narayan Kulkarni

(narayan.kulkarni@mmactiv.com)