India-origin pharma patents jump four-fold, innovation pipeline tops 1,095: Report

India’s pharmaceutical innovation is accelerating, with patent families increasing four-fold and over 1,095 drug discovery programmes underway. A BCG-HealthKois report highlights stronger research, investment, regulatory reforms, and indigenous breakthroughs, positioning India as a rising global life sciences innovation hub

New Delhi: India-origin pharmaceutical patent families have risen more than four-fold over the past decade, while the country’s drug discovery pipeline has expanded to more than 1,095 programmes across 195 companies, signalling a rapid shift from generics-led manufacturing to innovation-driven research, a report showed on Wednesday.

According to a joint report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and HealthKois, the country is at a juncture where the next five years will determine whether it can transform its strengths in scientific talent, cost competitiveness and data into a globally competitive life sciences innovation ecosystem. Pharma patent families originating from India increased more than four-fold to 2,995 in 2024 from around 716 in 2015, while private equity and venture capital investment in the pharmaceutical sector more than doubled to $731 million in FY26, it said.

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During the same period, the number of biotech startups rose from nearly 1,500 to 2,400. India’s share of global pharma patents from 3–4 per cent to about 10 per cent is qualitative, not just quantitative, the report said.

Moreover, India has already produced more than 10 novel drug assets over the past decade, with companies increasingly moving beyond generics and biosimilars to develop, license and commercialise innovative medicines for global markets, the report noted.

It highlighted four key drivers behind the momentum like nearly $5 billion in government funding for early-stage and translational research, stronger academia-industry collaboration, regulatory reforms that have reduced drug development timelines from 180-270 days to 60-120 days and shared research and manufacturing infrastructure such as Genome Valley and C-CAMP.

The report also pointed to early success stories, including BIRSA 101, India’s first indigenously developed CRISPR-based therapeutic and NexCAR19 — an indigenous CAR-T therapy priced at nearly one-tenth the cost of comparable overseas treatments.

“India’s innovation trajectory is gaining real momentum, and its evolution into a sustained innovation engine is well underway,” said Priyanka Aggarwal, Managing Director and Senior Partner at BCG India and Southeast Asia.

“We are seeing India-origin science licensed by global pharma majors and indigenous CAR-T therapies treating patients at a fraction of the global cost. Capital that understands the science and is willing to back it through the early, uncertain years will be the difference between a handful of breakout successes and a durable innovation engine,” said Charles Janssen, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, HealthKois.

India’s biggest opportunity lies in combining its cost advantage, scientific talent and large, diverse patient datasets to build globally competitive innovation platforms rather than competing solely on frontier science, according to the report.