Telangana has made rapid strides in the life sciences industry in the last five years and is set to achieve a turnover of US$250 billion in the sector by 2030, state industries and information technology minister K T Rama Rao said on Friday.
Inaugurating the 20th edition of BioAsia-2023, Asia’s largest life sciences and healthcare convention, in Hyderabad, KTR, as the minister is popularly called, said the state had earlier set a target of reaching US$100 billion turnover in life sciences industry by 2028 but it had already touched US$ 80 million by 2022 itself.
“Given the current momentum, I am confident that we will achieve our target of US$100 billion by 2025 itself, three years ahead of schedule. The life sciences sector in Telangana was growing at 23% for the last two years compared to the national average of about 14%,” he said.
He said BioAsia convention had consistently played a crucial role in the development of the life sciences industry in Telangana and India. “This outstanding platform has consistently attracted a galaxy of healthcare, pharma, and life sciences leaders from more than 100 countries,” he said.
KTR said the Covid-19 pandemic had proved the value of collaboration and its impact on people’s well-being. The world came together to overcome one of humanity’s greatest healthcare challenges, he said.
Stating that Telangana has been a front-runner in identifying the importance of life sciences, pharma and of course the development of holistic healthcare, the minister said Hyderabad was the only city in the country that has an ever-growing Genome Valley, an expanding Medtech Park and an upcoming Pharma City, which will be the world’s largest.
“This state-of-the-art infrastructure, combined with progressive policies and proactive execution on the part of the government has distinguished Telangana as a progressive state and enhanced the state’s share and contribution to positive health outcome nationally and globally,” he said.
KTR declared that the government would make all-out efforts 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 drive the convergence of healthcare and technology,” he said.
In his keynote address, Novartis chief executive officer Dr Vas Narasimhan explained the company had grown multifold in Hyderabad over the years. “In the last five years, we doubled our presence here. We then brought the core of our drug development, data management, patient safety, manufacturing centres, procurement, people management and multiple senior roles here,” he said.
Narasimhan said Hyderabad was no longer a service centre for Novartis, but had emerged as its corporate centre, one of three in the whole world. “The talent in this country is second to none. It is an invitation to all the leaders in this room, to keep investments coming to India,” he said.
NITI Aayog member (health) V K Paul, chief executive officer of Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) Dr Richard Hatchett, executive vice-president of Global Drug Development, Bristol Myers Squibb Dr Samit Hirwat, Unice representative to India Cynthia McCaffrey and others participated in the panel discussions of the summit.
