USD 100 Billion Nutraceutical Market Of India: An Opportunity In The Making
India is poised to be a $10 trillion economy by 2030. India has its ace performing industry in Information technology, pharmaceuticals/healthcare, Metals, automotive, textiles and Power. These sectors will have an additional load to perform to drive India to its target 2030. There also exist opportunities to enable and empower industries that have inherent powers to contribute to economy. One such industry is nutraceuticals that stand alone can contribute $100 billion by 2030.
Currently global nutraceutical market is $400 Billion. 60% of this is the USA. India currently stands at 2%, while neighboring country stands at $40 Billion. India with current contribution of $8 billion has immediate capability to ramp up to $40 billion by 2024 if basic tweaks in policies and supports are given to this industry.
To set the context, lets first understand that nutraceutical is a specialized industry where nutrition is designed with evidence-based health outcomes as key focus. The ingredients of the nutraceuticals come from plant sources, biotechnology, and animals. India has a head start with Ayurveda. India has 7000 plants that contribute to medicines/ nutraceuticals. 1200 plants are actively traded. To make a sense of what each plant could contribute to is to take a look at success story of Ashwagandha and curcumin. Both plant sources have been there in use in traditional Indian medicine, but they did not have compelling story for global believability. Both plant sources took to global focus when their value was validated through modern science backed by clinical trials. Today Curcumin and Ashwagandha combined together commands over $278 million globally. Imagine if we could go through same exercise to 1200 actively traded plants? Even if we target top 20, we are looking at around $8 billion. With focus of only 20 ingredients being added a year into scientific validation, India can look forward to contribute about $30 billion purely from plants.
Let’s take a deep dive into what nutraceuticals is and what’s needed to make it a $100 billion industry in India by 2030.
Nutraceuticals features in between food and drugs with strong orientation towards drugs as this industry is driven by science, health outcomes, clinical trials, etc. The pillars of nutraceuticals industry are 1) Medicinal plants standardized farming, 2) ANI (Active nutraceutical ingredients), 3) Formulations 4) Start-UP ecosystem, 5) Academia.
The power of 5 that awaits to be unleashed to take India to $40 billion market by 2024
1. India has the power of 52 Agroclimatic zones. This brings to us the opportunity of having highest variety of medicinal plants that can be grown in India. This strength remains mostly untapped.
2. The rich lead of Ayurveda that awaits clinical validation as per modern science protocols.
3. The strength of Indian pharmaceutical formulation and clinical validation practice is yet to be leveraged in nutraceuticals.
4. The evolved food tech industry’s formulation knowledge has not well percolated into nutraceuticals.
5. The US market access. India enjoys one of the best relations with USA. However the support from government to create exposure to Indian nutraceutical innovators is missing.
The challenges that’s resisting the nutraceutical powerhouse of India are:
1. No door for industry needs: Pharma? -Food? -Aayush? -Medicinal plants?
2. No dedicated industry bodies
3. No HSN codes- Industry under pressure to comply to irrelevant HSN codes
4. No dedicated regulatory
5. No educational infrastructure
6. No incentive, grants and investment programs
7. No support to internationalization of Nutra industry
Some key areas that come up as solution are:
Business Empowerment
1. Internationalization initiatives: UNPA-India Initiative*
2. Empowering Shefexil and its industry promotion program
3. Solve Biodiversity confusions
4. Policy shaping for HSN codes
5. Policy shaping for Industry specific PLI schemes
6. Creation of Industry specific Investment tools
7. Incorporating under National Medicinal Plans
8. Identify top 10 products to focus on- for global leadership
Regulatory and Human Resource capacity building
1. Rewrite/Edit Indian Ayurveda Pharmacopoeia
2. Set up FSSAI nutraceutical policies and the way its processed.
3. Academia collaboration for giving space to innovations
India has rare winning proposition to be a global leader in nutraceuticals outside of USA with revenues in range of USD 100 billion by 2030; yet it remains cornered due to its entangled counterproductive policies.
