India’s biopharma industry is shifting towards biologics and complex medicines, propelled by policy support, startup funding, and a domestic innovation push, as companies focus on localisation, skill development, and industry-academia collaboration.
India’s biopharma industry is moving deeper into biologics and other complex medicines, and Thermo Fisher Scientific says the shift is being reinforced by policy support, fresh startup funding and a growing domestic innovation base. In an interview with Elets News Network, Tony Acciarito, Thermo Fisher’s president for APMEA, and Srinath Venkatesh, the company’s managing director for India and South Asia, said the market is changing quickly but still needs stronger access to technology, talent and industry-academia collaboration.
The backdrop is a more assertive policy push from New Delhi. India’s National Biopharma Mission, run by the Department of Biotechnology and funded through BIRAC, is designed to expand the country’s capabilities in vaccines, biotherapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. More recently, the government unveiled Biopharma SHAKTI, a ₹10,000 crore programme over five years intended to strengthen biologics and biosimilars, expand clinical trial capacity and support India’s ambition of becoming a global manufacturing hub. Those initiatives fit with the shift Thermo Fisher says it is seeing on the ground.
Venkatesh said the company’s localisation strategy is driven less by abstract market share goals than by customer access and speed. He pointed to its air quality monitoring business as an example of localisation that already exceeds government thresholds for domestic sourcing, helping the company qualify for public tenders. But he argued that the same approach also supports broader capability-building, whether the customer is in the public sector or private industry.
Thermo Fisher is also widening its footprint through experience centres and academic partnerships. The company says it now has centres of excellence and capability partnerships across India, including facilities in Hyderabad as well as links with IIT Guwahati, KIIT, C-CAMP in Bengaluru and government bodies such as CFSL in Gandhinagar and FSSAI in Ghaziabad. Acciarito said the goal is to create an ecosystem where customers can test technologies, train staff and turn those experiences into faster innovation.
That emphasis on skills runs through the company’s view of India’s biggest bottleneck. Venkatesh said the transition from generics to large molecules will require much more talent development and deeper collaboration between industry and academia. Acciarito called talent the sector’s most pressing challenge globally, saying companies must adapt working practices, offer more flexibility and build teams that can speak the same technical language as customers. Both executives said Thermo Fisher expects India to remain a long-term investment priority as demand rises for biologics, biosimilars and the analytical tools needed to characterise them.
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