BioAsia 2023: Working to position Hyderabad as ‘Health-tech Mecca,’ says KTR

Hyderabad: Industries minister K.T. Rama Rao said that the Telangana life sciences ecosystem valuation would cross the $250 billion mark by 2030.

Addressing the inaugural session of the 20th edition of BioAsia 2023 at HICC here on Friday, Rao said that with technology and artificial intelligence (AI) driving transformative changes in the way diseases are diagnosed and healthcare delivered to patients, the state government is working on a program to position Hyderabad as the ‘Health-tech Mecca’ of the world.

Dwelling about the strides Telangana has made in the life sciences industry, Rao said, "We had set out a vision of doubling our ecosystem value to $100 billion by 2030. A lot of people felt that it was too ambitious. I am pleased to announce that the value has touched $80 billion in 2022.”

“Given the current momentum, I am confident that we will achieve our target of $100 billion by 2025, five years ahead of schedule. This represents a mindboggling 23 per cent growth over the last two years compared to the national average of about 14 per cent," Rama Rao said to huge applause.

Those present at the event included government officials and policy makers, business executives, scientists, researchers and others enjoying global repute.

Elaborating on the state’s achievements, the minister said, "Our growth is evident from the fact that we have been able to attract net new investments of more than $3 billion over the last seven years, during which time we have provided employment to over 4.5 lakh people, across sectors."

He said the aim was to make Telangana the ‘knowledge capital’ of the global life sciences industry. On his vision to further the sector’s growth in the state, Rao said, "Today we have established our stature as the world's pre-eminent life sciences destination, but I don't want us to stop here. We have a unique opportunity to help reshape the future of the industry. We need to dream big, and go about achieving it."

Stating that Telangana has been a frontrunner in identifying the importance of life sciences, pharma, and holistic healthcare, Rao said, "With our vision to develop, promote and propagate an enabling ecosystem, we are proud to state that Hyderabad is the only city in the country that has an ever-growing Genome Valley, an expanding Medtech Park and an upcoming Pharma City, slated to be the world's largest pharma cluster.”

He said the state contributed 40 per cent of the country’s pharmaceutical production, was home to more than 1,000 life sciences companies and was the only region globally to have more than 200 FDA approved sites for pharmaceutical manufacturing that produce innovator and generic medicines.

The minister said, "Over the next five years we will position Hyderabad as a high-end GCC destination for world’s leading life sciences companies. These efforts will help expand our knowledge capital beyond manufacturing and to other parts of its value chain. Efforts are also underway to establish an institute of curative medicine in the city for providing affordable development and commercialisation of new-age curative therapies, particularly cell and gene therapy, for disease pertinent to India,” he said.

Meanwhile the theme for this edition of BioAsia is ‘Advancing for ONE: shaping the next generation of humanized healthcare.’

Dr Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis, Switzerland, delivering the keynote address, said, "I visited Hyderabad 15 years back when we were just about starting out here hoping to build a capacity centre. It grew multifold. Over 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 to Hyderabad."

Stating that Hyderabad was no longer a service center for Novartis, Narasimhan said, "It is our corporate centre, one of three in the world. I take tremendous pride since it is not only a story of Hyderabad but of India as well, that we can move up in the value chain. After all, the talent in this country is second to none."