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Telangana has registered 200 per cent growth in investments in the life sciences sector over the previous year, State Minister for Industries and Commerce K. T. Rama Rao said on Thursday.

The state attracted investments worth more than Rs 6,400 crore from about 215 companies creating additional employment for more than 34,000 people in the last one year.

This clearly underscores the growing role and impact of Hyderabad's life sciences ecosystem and the state's endeavour to ensure required support to the sector, the minister said while inaugurating BioAsia 2022.

The 19th edition of BioAsia, Asia's largest annual global biotechnology and life sciences convention, is being addressed by prominent global leaders from the life sciences and healthcare industry.

KTR, as the minister is popularly known, said Genome Valley's prominence has been recognised globally in the wake of the pandemic, with most of the country's vaccine manufacturers being from this cluster. "It is a matter of immense pride for us that two out of the three indigenously developed vaccines - Covaxin and Corbevax - are from Hyderabad. Also, both the vaccines which are approved in India for children are from Hyderabad."

Genome valley continues to witness expansion of several pharmaceutical companies. Syngene International, a leading CRO, is expanding its operations in the cluster. Germany-headquartered global leader in pharmaceutical excipient solutions, DFE Pharma, is set to launch their center of excellence named as Closer to the Formulator (C2F). Also, Yapan Bio, which started in Genome Valley, recently saw investment from Piramal Pharma of more than Rs 100 crore to continue their expansion in the cluster. Also, companies like Porus Life Sciences, CVR Life Sciences, Dandu Bio Sciences and Laurus Synthesis are investing around Rs 500 crore cumulatively in the cluster.

Telangana has also identified medical devices as a high-potential and high growth sector. He claimed that the sector is growing by leaps and bounds. Recalling that he inaugurated seven companies in Medical Devices Park in December, he said almost 20 more facilities will be operational in the next six months. The park now has over 50 companies setting up their manufacturing and R&D units with an overall investment commitment of around Rs 1,500 crore and total employment of around 7,000 direct jobs, in addition to about Rs 1,500 crore of investment from companies like Medtronic, B-Braun, etc in Hyderabad.

KTR also told the inaugural session of the two-day virtual event that the state is inching closer to the launch of the world's largest pharmaceutical cluster, Hyderabad Pharma City. The cluster has been planned with the most advanced and efficient utility and environmental infrastructure, with the objective of increasing cost-competitiveness of the industry ultimately making affordable and quality medicines available for the citizens globally. He exuded confidence that the cluster will truly redefine the landscape of pharmaceuticals and also industrial clusters globally.

KTR said while India ranks third in terms of volume, we are only 14th in terms of value in the global pharma market. "There is a huge gap in value and volume contribution, which can be filled only by moving up in the value chain. The gap cannot be bridged with incremental innovation in generics alone but we must build our capabilities in areas like complex generics, biologics & biosimilars, cell and gene therapy, breakthrough R&D, clinical research, etc. Government needs to stand with the industry to see how some of the pricing pressures can be balanced with strong volume growth. And how our capable human talent can be leveraged as a core differentiator globally, and how more R&D can be incentivised to quickly move up the value chain."

KTR noted that while some of the Indian healthcare companies have achieved global scale, the presence of global healthcare companies in the country is limited and their growth is also declining over the years. "As of now, India represents just a small percentage of global revenue for most of them, even though we have close to 18 per cent of the global population. We must encourage trans-national healthcare companies to invest in India as they can help India play a much larger role in the global value chain," he said.

He called for creating a more conducive environment for the healthcare companies to develop, operate and manufacture in the country and make these innovative drugs and devices available for citizens. While the policies and regulations have improved in the country, there is so much more to be done in terms of our IP policy and enforcement framework, regulatory reforms, development of ancillary industries, pricing policy rationalisation, reimbursement schemes, duty structure correction particularly for medical devices and rare diseases drugs, incentives to support R&D investment, among others to accelerate economic growth and also, make healthcare delivery better and more importantly affordable, he added.

He said that Telangana is focusing on creating advanced scientific infrastructure, training industry-ready talent pool, rationalising state-level regulations & clearances, and promoting linkages between industry and academia in a more systematic and institutionalised manner. He was confident that Telangana will achieve the target to become a $100 billion valuation by 2030 up from $50 billion in 2020 driven by innovation.