India, China continue to rule global biotech market

New Delhi, Apr 11 (UNI) As the revenue of publicly-traded biotechnology firms surpassed 60 billion dollars, India and China continue to rule the global markets due to low drug manufacturing costs and increased access to markets, an Ernst&Young study said here today.

''India and China continued to attract attention and deals, motivated by the desire to increase access to these large and growing drug markets, and lower the costs of drug development,'' the 20th anniversary edition of Beyond Borders: The Global Biotechnology Report 2006 said.

According to the report, the number of deals in vaccines was energised by concerns around the avian flu, SARS, and biodefence products, while looming patent expirations led to increased deals in the generics segment.

With India becoming a signatory to the Patents Law, more and more domestic and international companies, most of who have set up their base in the country, are eagerly conducting research and development activities in the country, leading to global initiatives in front-end technologies.

''India was among the 10 nations that co-operated in a project to sequence the rice genome, successfully completed in 2005,'' it said.

Reflecting growing investor confidence in the sector, the companies are successfully tapping invetments from investors apart from international organisations like the World Bank.

However, changing of regulatory and policy structure adds to the complexity of valuing companies.

"Seed capital to fund startups will be critical for the growth of India's biotech sector and government incentives or initiatives to spur seed capital hold the key to investments in this sector," said the company's Industry Leader-Health Sciences Utkarsh Palnitkar.

MORE UNI CS RA KP1729