Mumbai has beaten Bangalore to become the country’s top biotech city in terms of revenue, while biopharmaceuticals company Biocon had the highest revenue in 2009-10, according to a survey.
The Bangalore-based company, known for its insulin and cancer drugs, topped the Biospectrum-ABLE list of top 20 biotech companies after a gap of four years, growing at 29.34 per cent to record a revenue of Rs 1,180 crore.
The Indian biotech industry grew threefold in just five years to report revenues of $3 billion in 2009-10, a rise of 17 per cent over the previous year. This was revealed in the eighth annual survey, conducted by the Association of Biotechnology-Led Enterprises (ABLE) and a monthly journal, BioSpectrum, based on inputs from over 150 biotech companies.
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The biopharma sector contributed nearly three-fifth to the industry’s revenues at Rs 8,829 crore, a rise of 12 per cent, followed by bioservices at Rs 2,639 crore and bioagri at Rs 1,936 crore. The remaining revenue came from the bioindustrials (Rs 564 crore) and bioinformatics (Rs 231 crore) segments.
The sunrise sector earned a little more than half of its revenue from exports. Biopharma and bioservices sectors contributed 63 per cent and 33 per cent, respectively, to the total biotech exports. The bioagriculture, bioindustrials and bioinformatics sectors remained focused on domestic operations, bringing in nearly 90 per cent of their revenues from India. The survey noted that the biotechnology ecosystem had become stronger, 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 to the industry,” said Narayanan Suresh, group editor of BioSpectrum.
While Mumbai outpaced Bangalore by a margin of about Rs 200 crore, Western India continued to dominate the country’s biotech industry with a 46 per cent share in the overall revenues of Rs 14,199 crore. Gujarat’s share in the total revenue grew by about 50 per cent to cross Rs 1,100 crore. Pune’s contribution went down as Serum Institute of India suffered contract setbacks. South continued to remain India’s largest biotech cluster in terms of the number of companies. Nine new biotech companies set their base in South, the highest during the year, with revenues of Rs 5,537.68 crore, making up 39 per cent of the overall revenues. The Northern biocluster — National Capital Region (NCR) contribute 56 per cent of the revenues -- about 15 per cent of the overall industry revenue.
