Indian Pharmaceutical Industry: An Overview

Abstract

Pharmaceutical industry contributes to the welfare of humanity and provides significant socioeconomic benefits to the society through creation of jobs, supply chains and community development. Indian Pharmaceutical industry is one of the world's largest and most developed, ranking fourth in terms of volume and thirteenth in terms of value. The country accounts for an estimated 10% of global production and 2% of world markets in pharmaceuticals. It has over the years made significant progress in infrastructure development, technical capability and hence produced a wide range of pharmaceutical products. The industry now produces bulk drugs under all major therapeutic groups. It has a sizable technically skilled manpower with prowess in process development and downstream processing. It has the capital investment of about US$4.1billion. It produced bulk drugs of value of US$3.5 billion and formulations worth US$15.4billion in 2008. Bulk drugs have grown at a rate of approximately 14%, and formulation by 24% in the nineties. There is an increasing interest and investment in R&D. It provides employments 29 million people. The contribution of pharmaceutical sector in India's GDP is 2% and 12% of manufacturing sector GDP.