Telangana to position Hyderabad as 'Health-Tech Mecca'

Hyderabad, Feb 24:  The government of Telangana will work on a programme to position Hyderabad as the "Health-Tech Mecca" of the world, state industries minister K.T. Rama Rao announced on Friday.

Through various incubator programmes, and access to deep computing resources, the state will actively support startups that drive the convergence of healthcare and technology.

He exuded confidence that a few global health-tech unicorns will emerge out of this programme.

Addressing BioAsia, the leading life sciences event which began here on Friday, he described Hyderabad as the life sciences capital of Asia.

The 20th edition of BioAsia is being attended by healthcare, pharma, and life sciences leaders from more than 100 countries.

KTR, as the minister is popularly known, recalled that the state had set out a vision of doubling the value of the life sciences ecosystem to $100 billion by 2030.

"A lot of people felt that it was too ambitious. I am pleased to announce that the ecosystem value has already touched $80 billion in 2022. This represents a phenomenal ecosystem value growth in Telangana at a mind boggling 23 per cent over the last two years compared to the national average of about 14 per cent," he said.

He exuded confidence that the state will achieve the target by 2025 itself, five years ahead of schedule.

"We are proud to state that Hyderabad is the only city in the country that has an ever-growing Genome Valley, an expanding Medtech Park and an upcoming Pharma City, which will be the world's largest," he said.

KTR said the state attracted net new investment of more than $3 billion over the last 7 years. More than 4.5 lakh jobs were created during the same period.

"Our ultimate aim is to make Telangana, the knowledge capital of the world's life sciences industry. A key component of this is the growth of the lifesciences services sector. We already serve more than 1,000 lifesciences companies globally, including the top 10 pharma companies, in their innovation journey," he said.

The minister explained that this is being done through the cutting-edge work being executed by R&D and technology partners like Aragen, Sai, Syngene, Deloitte, Accenture, Tech Mahindra, among many others.

He pointed out that 4 of the top 10 global innovator companies now have a direct presence in Hyderabad through their dedicated centers. These centers drive core R&D, digital and engineering activities, thereby contributing to bringing lifesaving cost-effective therapies and devices to patients world-wide.

He said convergence of healthcare and technology is one of the four pillars the government is building.

The other three are complex manufacturing at scale, R&D and innovation, building high-end, cross value chain Global Capability Centre (GCCs)

"Our ultimate vision through building these four pillars is to play a significant part in advancing the quality of human lives world-wide. And we can only do it if we bring forth the spirit of collaboration. Hence, theme of BioAsia 2023 "Advancing for one" couldn't be more relevant," he said.

He said the Covid-19 pandemic has proved the value of collaboration and its impact on people's wellbeing, when the world came together to overcome one of humanity's greatest healthcare challenges. Hence, the theme Advancing for One to celebrate the spirit of collaboration and promoting human prosperity.

KTR pointed out that Telangana contributes 40 per cent of India's Pharma production and is home to more than 1,000 life sciences companies.

"We are the only region in the world to have more than 200 FDA approved sites for pharmaceutical manufacturing which produce both innovator and generic medicines. Our capability will be further strengthened with the launch of Hyderabad Pharma City, which is the world's largest and sustainable integrated pharma park."

"Hyderabad has been leading biological production in the country with its key players like Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Biological E, Bharat Biotech, Shantha Biotech, Aurobindo, Hetero, Gland Pharma and Virchow Biotech. We are working on establishing Biopharma Hub (B-hub), which is a first-of-its-kind Growth-Phase Center and Biopharma Scale-up Manufacturing facility in India," he added.

He revealed that the state was also making investments in the Cell and Gene Therapy space and e-working towards establishing an Institute of Curative Medicine in Hyderabad with the aim to provide affordable development and commercialisation of the new age curative therapies (particularly cell and gene therapy) for disease pertinent to India.