Union Budget Unveils ₹10,000 Crore Biopharma Push to Strengthen India’s Life Sciences Ecosystem

The Union Budget has proposed an investment of Rs 10, 000 crore in the biopharmaceutical sector of India over the next five years, which is a clear policy move to strengthen the domestic capabilities in advanced medicines and high, value pharmaceutical manufacturing. The announcement thus makes biopharma one of the key strategic pillars of India's long, term healthcare and industrial growth roadmap.

Biopharmaceuticals, also known as biologics, are very complicated medicines which are either extracted or derived from living organisms, cells, or tissues, and that have not been chemically synthesized in the traditional way, by a chemist. The list of such medicines covers vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, gene therapies, and cancer, autoimmune disorders, and rare diseases treatments with advanced biologics. At the global level, biologics are one of the fastest growing segments in the pharmaceutical market and thus the $10 billion investment of India is meant to bridge the gap in research, manufacturing and innovation amongst others.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman indicated that the biopharma plan would be a part of the wider set of interventions covering six major focus areas, such as manufacturing, strategic and frontier sectors, healthcare, and advanced technology. The grant is aimed at facilitating the development of infrastructure, technology upgrades, and innovation ecosystems, thus enabling Indian enterprises to shift from the production of generic drugs to complex biologics.

Alongside this, the budget equally emphasised the government's semiconductor self reliance drive. Sitharaman declared that Semiconductor Mission 2.0 "will give priority to the production of equipment and materials based on full, stack Indian intellectual property". India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) is an autonomous non profit unit under the Digital India Corporation operating in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). Its mandate is to enable the establishment of a semiconductor and display manufacturing ecosystem in India. The decision to keep integrating biopharma and semiconductor initiatives further demonstrates the ambition to strengthen the deep, tech, and manufacturing base of India.

Meanwhile, the finance minister also announced that the governments of resource rich states like Odisha, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu will be facilitated to establish critical mineral infrastructure. These minerals are going to be required in various sectors such as pharmaceuticals, electronic, renewable energy, and advanced manufacturing which the government is focusing on for a resilient supply chain development.

Reiterating the government’s development philosophy, Sitharaman said the initiatives align with the principle of “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas,” which she described as the government’s third Kartavya. Experts believe that if effectively implemented, the biopharma investment could boost innovation, generate skilled employment, and strengthen India’s position as a global healthcare and life sciences hub.