Mumbai June 17, 2010 - The Indian biotech industry has grown 3-fold in just 5 years to report revenues of US $3 billion in 2009-10, a growth of 17% over the previous year.

According to the ABLE-BioSpectrum survey South continues to remain India’s largest Biotech cluster in terms of the number of companies adding 9 new biotech companies, highest in the country during the year.

The region has 172 biotech companies (compared to 137 companies in the West) which posted revenues of Rs 5537.68 crore during the year making up 39% of the overall revenues.

Mumbai outpaced Bangalore, with a small margin of about Rs. 200 crore, to become India’s Top Biotech City in terms of revenue while Bangalore-based biopharmaceuticals firm Biocon, known for insulin and cancer drugs had the highest revenue in 2009-10. It topped the BioSpectrum-ABLE list of Top 20 Biotech Companies after a gap of four years growing at 29.34% to record revenues of Rs. 1180 crore.

Hyderabad based Nuziveedu Seeds Limited (NSL), the largest hybrid seed company in India, sold nearly 7 million packets of Bt cotton seeds in 2009-10 giving it a market share of 36% as also the number one supplier of rice seeds status in the private sector. Nuziveedu emerged as the 4th largest BioTech company in India.
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This has been revealed in the 8th annual survey conducted jointly by the Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE) and monthly journal, BioSpectrum, from the CyberMedia group based on inputs from over 150 biotech companies.

The Biopharma sector contributed nearly three-fifth to industry’s revenues at Rs. 8829 crore a growth of 12% followed by Bioservices at Rs 2639 crore and Bioagri at Rs. 1936 crore. The remaining revenue came from the Bioindustrials segment with a contribution of Rs 564 crore and Bioinformatics at Rs 231 crore.

The sunrise sector earns a little more than half its revenue from exports. Biopharma and Bioservices sector contributed 63% and 33% to the total biotech exports respectively. The Bioagriculture, Bioindustrial and Bioinformatics Sectors remained focused on domestic operations bringing in nearly 90% of their revenues from India.

The BioSpectrum study notes that the biotechnology ecosystem has become strong with technology providers and the biotech education sectors playing a key role.

“Overall, there is cautious optimism within the biotech industry and the recent government efforts to boost the infrastructure and support for various industry initiatives will bring succour for the industry,” says Narayanan Suresh, Group Editor of BisoSpectrum.

Biocon, Serum Institute Top Biotech Companies
Bangalore-based biopharmaceuticals firm Biocon, known for insulin and cancer drugs had the highest revenue in 2009-10. It topped the BioSpectrum-ABLE list of Top 20 Biotech Companies after a gap of four years growing at 29.34% to record revenues of Rs. 1180 crore.

Pune-based Serum Institute of India, that makes one out of every two vaccines produced in the world, slipped to No. 2 position with revenues of Rs. 850 crore. Last year, Serum was the first company in India approached by the World Health Organization to develop and manufacture the H1N1 vaccine to fight the swine flu pandemic.

Panacea Biotec, Nuziveedu Seeds and Reliance Life Sciences were ranked No 3, 4 and 5 respectively

The New Delhi headquartered pharmaceuticals, biopharmaceuticals and vaccine maker, Panacea Biotech, played a key role in eradicating polio by supplying over six billion doses of oral polio vaccine to the Government of India and UNICEF.

Nuziveedu Seeds Limited (NSL), the largest hybrid seed company in India, sold nearly 7 million packets of Bt cotton seeds in 2009-10 giving it a market share of 36% as also the number one supplier of rice seeds status in the private sector.

Reliance Life Sciences, earned 70% of its topline growth from biopharmaceuticals. The company has set up the first cord blood repository in South Asia and offers cord blood banking services to public.

The next 5 positions went to Quintiles, Rasi Seeds, NovoNordisk, Shantha Biotech and Mahyco.

Mumbai outpaces Bangalore to become India’s Top Biotech city
Mumbai outpaced Bangalore, with a small margin of about Rs. 200 crore, to become India’s Top Biotech City in terms of revenue.

Western India continued to dominate India’s biotech industry with 46% share in the overall revenues of Rs. 14,199 crore. The 137 companies in the region clocked Rs. 6,631 crore during the year increasing the region’s share in the overall revenues by 3% over 2008-09, thus gaining a lead of 6% over South.

Gujarat’s share in the total revenue grew by about 50% to cross Rs 1100 crore. Pune’s contribution went down as Serum Institute of India suffered contract set backs.

West is home to top Bioagri companies such as Monsanto, Mahyco and Ajeet Seeds and MNCs like GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Aventis Pharma, Wyeth, Quintiles.

Four of India’s top 10 services companies (CROs) are also based out of West, including the No 1 CRO in the Indian industry – Quintiles India (Rs 375 crore).

According to the ABLE-BioSpectrum survey South continues to remain India’s largest Biotech cluster in terms of the number of companies adding 9 new biotech companies, highest in the country during the year. The region has 172 biotech companies (compared to 137 companies in the West) which posted revenues of Rs 5537.68 crore during the year making up 39% of the overall revenues.

The Northern biocluster -- National Capital Region (NCR) -- is home to the Top 3 companies, Panacea, Jubilant and Eli Lily, contributing 56% of the revenues from North and about 15% of the overall industry revenue. This cluster is better known for its research institutes and of course, government bodies.

Top 20 Indian Biotech firms 2009-10: BioSpectrum-ABLE study

Source: 8th BioSpectrum-ABLE study of Indian BioTech Industry 2010

Future growth pegged to high teens to early twenties
The BioSpectrum-ABLE study is not optimistic about the industry going back to the days of heady growth of 30% or more as most industry leaders agree that the industry is maturing and an annual growth will be around 20% in the near future.

The BioServices sector is now moving towards becoming regional players with many companies expanding their footprint to South East Asian countries.

The study points out that even though the moratorium on Bt brinjal and the uncertainty over regulatory approval for genetically-modified (GM) foods has not had much impact on the BioAgri industry’s performance, the industry is waiting for the correct signals from the regulator. The recent regulatory approval to conduct field trials of 17 crops has sent out mixed signals about the future prospects of the sector.

Also, the added public scrutiny over GM products due to the relentless campaign against Bt brinjal has added to the misery of the Bioagri sector. There is now a clamor for further reduction in prices of Bt cotton with the demand to scrap the technology fee charged by the innovator.

Notes to the Editor:

• Companies shared information with us to the extent it was possible by them about their companies and the industry.
• The revenues considered for the analysis are biotech products sales and service figures. In several cases, where revenue figures were not available estimates were arrived talking to industry experts.
• This year in the list of Top 20 biotech companies, services companies in the drug discovery space have been taken into account, while diagnostics companies have not been considered.
• Biotech suppliers’ revenues are not considered as part of the biotech definition.
• Biopharma included products made by fermentation/animal cell culture (not animal extracts) and plant cell culture (not plant extracts).
• The Bioagri segment analysis has included only the GM seeds and molecular markers and related products. So, the hybrid seeds business is not a part of the agri-business sales values.
• For all the ranking purposes, we have taken the biotech business only into consideration.
• Wherever turnover is mentioned it means, sales turnover from biotech. Therefore, turnover wherever mentioned is not necessarily the total sales turnover of the company.

About BioSpectrum
BioSpectrum and BioSpectrum Asia offer an integrated B2B media platform for life sciences industry in India and the Asia Pacific region. Together they offer an online portal, fortnightly digital magazine and monthly print magazine as formats of delivery. The BioSpectrum was awarded for Excellence in New Business Models Category at the Asian Publishing Award 2008.

About CyberMedia
CyberMedia is the largest specialty media house in South Asia. It has leading media brands in the region including Dataquest, PCQuest, Voice&Data, BioSpectrum, BioSpectrum Asia, DARE, Global Services, Living Digital, MIT’s Technology Review and Halsbury’s Law Monthly

CyberMedia reaches out to a community of over 1.5 million people through publications, websites, events and TV programs. Its brands cover infotech, telecom, biotech, entrepreneurship, outsourcing, consumer electronics, and
legal domains.

Its media services include IDC India, the leading ICT market research company in the region; and Content Matrix, USA which provides through its subsidiaries, custom publishing and content management services.Or www.cybermedia.co.in

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