India’s biotech start-ups need larger and more patient pools of capital to take novel drug candidates through the long and high-risk development cycle, while stronger links between academia, investors and industry are needed to build a domestic innovation ecosystem, industry leaders said at a recent CII Pharma and Life Sciences Summit.
Dr Kavitha Iyer Rodrigues, founder and CEO of Zumutor Biologics, said the lack of patient capital remained one of the biggest challenges for Indian biotech companies developing novel molecules.
“In this highly lonely journey of start-ups in India, it’s been quite some time and quite some effort,” Rodrigues said, noting that her company had to build a cross-border structure and raise capital internationally for work that could have been undertaken in India.
She said India needed a venture capital ecosystem capable of writing larger cheques for biotech companies, investors with the expertise to assess novel molecules and closer collaboration between academia and start-ups.
“These three pieces have to come together,” she said, adding that “the pain point has always been money.”
Ashish Venkataramani, partner at Eight Roads, said the issue was not a lack of investor interest in life sciences, but that capital was largely flowing into mature businesses where execution had already been established.
“There is a deficit at the earlier stage where innovation is required,” he said.
According to Venkataramani, investment in Indian life sciences and healthcare has grown significantly in recent years, but much of it has gone into CRDMOs, large-scale manufacturers and capacity expansion rather than early-stage innovation.
He said India’s relatively small market for innovative products, constrained by out-of-pocket spending and insurance penetration, also made it difficult for investors to back novel drug development.
Venkataramani suggested that government-backed funding mechanisms should be more focused on promising early-stage companies and designed to reduce risks for private investors. He cited Japan’s model of combining government funding with private investment for early-stage drug development.
He also argued that India could use its relatively late entry into biologics to its advantage by building AI-enabled and automated R&D infrastructure from the outset.
Anil Matai, director general of OPPI, said greater regulatory and policy predictability was also necessary to attract global investment and ensure faster launches of innovative medicines in India.
“What we need to get more launches in wave one in India is clearly more predictability,” Matai said, identifying regulation, intellectual property, regulatory data protection, pricing and access as key areas.
He said global companies make decisions on investment and product launches well before a medicine reaches the market and therefore need confidence that their investments and regulatory data will be protected.
Dr Dhananjay Bakhle, independent director at ENTOD Pharmaceuticals, said India also needed to move beyond its traditional manufacturing-led model and develop greater capabilities in novel drug research.
He suggested greater use of R&D tax incentives and CSR funding for pharmaceutical research, including collaborations involving startups, large pharmaceutical companies and other stakeholders.
Dr Amit Talwar, associate secretary general of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance, said regulatory predictability remained important because novel drug development involved longer timelines, larger investments and higher risks.
He also called for pooled risk capital involving the government, venture capital and industry to distribute the risks associated with early-stage innovation.
The panel also discussed the ₹10,000-crore Biopharma Shakti programme, with participants emphasising the need to support the entire biopharma value chain, from building research teams and early-stage development to clinical trials and market authorisation.
The panel said that there is a need for India to connect its start-up, academic, investment, regulatory and pharmaceutical ecosystems so that novel discoveries developed in the country can progress from research to globally competitive products.
Published on September 20, 2026
