Indian pharma companies excel despite challenges posed by COVID-19

Even after COVID-19 pandemic has cast its shadow on several sectors by hitting their finances, the Indian pharmaceutical industry has done exceedingly well.

When the global pharma market is negatively grown by 1-2% in 2020, there is a big surge in demand for Indian made generics owing to its quality and affordability. Drug formulations & biologicals is the second largest principal commodity being exported by India.

As per the quick estimates shared by the Department of Commerce, Government of India, drugs and pharmaceutical exports for the FY-21 (April 2020-March 2021) has touched USD 24.44 billion with a record growth of 18.07%. Exports during FY 2020 was USD 20.58 billion with growth rate of 7.57%.

"We have observed a big leap in our exports in the month of March 2021 which is USD 2.3billon (figures for March are provisional) & is the highest among the exports of all the months of this financial year. The growth rate for this month is 48.5% against the exports in March 2020 (USD 1.54 billion). Growth rate seems relatively big as the exports of March 2020 was crunched due to lockdown across the world & supply chain disruption," said a media note issued by Uday Bhaskar, Director General, Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil).

When contacted, he told Bizz Buzz on Saturday that as per the projections, if everything goes well, the pharma sector was expected to achieve a turnover of US$30 billion during the current fiscal.

While Hyderabad has earned the name of bulk drug capital of India, Visakhapatnam, being developed as the executive capital of Andhra Pradesh is emerging as a prominent hub with Jawaharlal Nehru Pharma City developed by Ramky under PPP and big players like Reddy's, Aurobindo Pharma, Divi's, Mylan and Pfizer have set up their facilities in and around Visakhapatnam.

According to a conservative estimate, Hyderabad accounts for the country's 40% bulk drug and 50% formulation production.

Uday Bhaskar said "pharma exports are substantially growing all these years and we have observed the highest export figures & growth rate in the 2020-21 financial year compared to the last eight financial years. We are expecting the same trend to continue further owing to increased demand of Indian made," he stated.

The industry is expecting big growth in vaccine exports in the coming years and the government policy on the PLI scheme would also help the Indian pharma to grow by reducing import dependence and develop export potential in the days to come as most of the countries are looking at India for APIs.

According to Uday Bhaskar, exports to all regions have done well with the growth rates never seen before. North America is the largest exporting region for Indian pharmaceuticals with more than 34% share. Country wise exports to USA, Canada & Mexico have recorded growth of 12.6%, 30% and 21.4% respectively. Exports to Africa has relatively gone up with 13.4% as against previous year's growth of 2.24%. South Africa being the second largest exporting country, recorded a big jump of 28% growth. Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania are the other major destinations in Africa.

The third largest exporting region has recorded approximately 11% growth. There is growing demand for our products in non-traditional markets viz LAC (14.5% growth), CIS (23.5% growth) & Middle East (17.5% growth. It's worth mentioning the growth rates observed in exports to unexplored countries like Australia (21%) UAE (43%), Uzbekistan (125%) and Ukraine (40.6%).

"We are happy to note that Pharmexcil's efforts in penetrating the markets of around 40 countries

other than North America and Europe during the pandemic by way of virtual business meetings with support of Department of Commerce & India Missions abroad yielded positive results."Uday Bhaskar said.