‘Health-Tech Mecca’: KTR says Telangana life sciences ecosystem will cross $250 billion by 2030

“A lot of people felt that it was too ambitious. The ecosystem value touched $80 billion in 2022. This represents a phenomenal ecosystem value growth in Telangana at a mindboggling rate of 23 percent over the last two years compared to the national average of about 14 percent,” said KTR

He said that given the current momentum, he was confident that the state would achieve the target of $100 billion by 2025 itself, five years ahead of schedule.

“The growth is evident from the fact that we have been able to attract net new investment of more than $3 billion over the last seven years. During the same period, we have created more than 4.5 lakh jobs,” said KTR.

He added that the ultimate aim was to make Telangana the knowledge capital of the world’s life sciences industry.

“A key component of this is the growth of the life sciences services sector. We already serve more than 1,000 life science companies globally, including the top 10 pharma companies,” said KTR.

“We have a unique opportunity to help reshape the future of the life science industry. We need to dream big. I envision that by 2030, the value of the life sciences ecosystem will cross $250 billion,” said KTR.

He said that there were four pillars that would help the state achieve this target.

Pillar 1: Complex manufacturing at scale

KTR said that Telangana contributes 40 percent of India’s Pharma production and is home to more than 1,000 life science companies.

“Our capability will be further strengthened with the launch of Hyderabad Pharma City, which is the world’s largest sustainable integrated pharma park,” said KTR.

Hyderabad has been leading biological production in the country with its key players like Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Biological E, Bharat Biotech, Shantha Biotech, Aurobindo, Hetero, Gland Pharma and Virchow Biotech, he said.

“We are working on establishing a Biopharma Hub (B-hub), which is a first-of-its-kind growth-phase centre, and a biopharma scale-up manufacturing facility in India. We are also making investments in the cell and gene therapy space and are working towards establishing an Institute of Curative Medicine in Hyderabad to provide affordable development and commercialisation of the new age curative therapies (particularly cell and gene therapy) for disease pertinent to India,” said KTR

Pillar 2: R&D and innovation

KTR added that Hyderabad is regarded as the epicentre for drug discovery and development services in Asia.

“We have all the requisite elements of relatively low costs of doing business, more than 3 million square feet of multi-tenanted facilities in Genome Valley, abundant supply of skilled / semi-skilled manpower, leading academic institutions and research centres,” said KTR.

He said that Hyderabad has become home to the largest number of Indian and multinational pharmaceutical research service organisations offering services ranging from medicinal chemistry, discovery biology, pre-clinical, clinical, drug development and clinical trial product manufacturing.

Pillar 3: Building Global capability centres

KTR said that Hyderabad is emerging as the most preferred location for Life sciences focused Global capability centres (GCCs).

“These GCCs drive and support key R&D, Analytics, Innovation and engineering teams globally. Over the next five years, we will position Hyderabad as a high-end GCC destination for the world’s leading Life sciences companies. These efforts will help expand our knowledge capital beyond manufacturing to other parts of the life sciences value chain. Outstanding infrastructure, great standard of living and access to world-class talent will help us deliver on this promise,” said KTR.

Pillar 4: Convergence of healthcare and technology

KTR added that technology has the potential to transform lives. The use of technology and the advent of AI will drive transformative changes in the way diseases are diagnosed and Healthcare is delivered to patients across the world.

“If we combine the engineering and product talent we have at large technology companies in Hyderabad, along with the deep life sciences domain knowledge, the possibilities are endless,” said KTR.

He announced that announce that we will work on a program to position Hyderabad as the “Health-Tech Mecca” of the world. Through our various incubator programmes and access to deep computing resources, we will actively support startups that drive the convergence of Healthcare and Technology. I am confident that we will have a few global health-tech unicorns that will emerge out of this program,” said KTR.