QUALITY · ACCESS · HOPE
Hope → Policy

India Made the Medicine. Policy Made It Possible.

India’s pharmaceutical exports grew from $14 billion to $31 billion in a decade. That growth wasn’t automatic — specific reforms removed specific barriers, one by one. Here is the evidence.

The Export Curve — And Where It Bent

India’s pharma exports by fiscal year, from DGCIS trade data. The colours mark policy eras: pre-GST (when growth was nearly flat), post-GST (when it accelerated), and the PLI era (when company investment and global demand pushed it further).

Pre-GST Post-GST PLI era
$14B
FY15
$15B
FY16
$15B
FY17
$16B
FY18
GST
$18B
FY19
$19B
FY20
$23B
FY21
PLI
$23B
FY22
$26B
FY23
$28B
FY24
$30B
FY25
$31B
FY26
$14B → $31B
Pharma exports · FY 2015 to FY 2026
213
Destination countries · FY 2025
1,030
FDA-registered Indian sites
Source. DGCIS India trade data, classified using the official “Drugs and Pharmaceuticals” commodity group (487 HS codes covering formulations, bulk drugs, biologicals, AYUSH products, surgicals, and vaccines). All values in US dollars, fiscal year April–March.

What Each Policy Did for Medicine

Seven milestones, each targeting a different barrier. For each one, we asked: did the numbers actually move? Below is what the data shows, and where it doesn’t.

2014 Make in India — The Signal to Invest
Make in India opened 25 sectors to higher foreign direct investment limits and streamlined approval processes. For pharmaceuticals, the signal was clear: India wanted to be a manufacturing destination, not just a consumer market.
Evidence check — DPIIT FDI data, FDA facility register

Cumulative FDI equity in Drugs & Pharmaceuticals: $24.8 billion (8th-largest sector at 3.2% of total inflows), per DPIIT Q3 FY 2025–26.

1,030 FDA-registered manufacturing sites in India, concentrated in Telangana (230), Gujarat (181), Maharashtra (139), Andhra Pradesh (115), and Karnataka (76). This infrastructure was built over decades, but the investment signal accelerated it.

2017 Goods and Services Tax — The Tax That Freed the Supply Chain
Before July 2017, a shipment of medicines from a factory in Hyderabad to a distributor in Mumbai crossed state-tax borders at every checkpoint. Seventeen different central and state levies compounded at each stage: excise duty, VAT, entry tax, octroi. GST replaced all of them with a single nationwide tax.
For pharma exporters, the change was immediate: input tax credits became fungible across states, and shipments moved without checkpoint delays.
Evidence check — DGCIS trade data

Pre-GST (FY 2015–17): Pharma exports were flat at $15.5B to $15.6B, essentially zero growth over two years (0.4% CAGR).

Post-GST (FY 2017–19): Exports accelerated to $19.1B, a 10.6% annual growth rate and the sharpest two-year acceleration in the decade.

Correlation is not proof of cause, but the timing is striking: the single largest break in the export curve falls precisely at the GST transition.

2018 Ayushman Bharat — The Demand Side
The world’s largest publicly funded health insurance scheme, covering 500 million citizens. By expanding healthcare access, it expanded the domestic market for medicines, the demand-side complement to the supply-side reforms. A stronger domestic market helps companies invest in manufacturing capacity that also serves export markets.
2020 Production Linked Incentives — Paying Companies to Build
India imports roughly $4.6 billion worth of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) each year, the raw materials that go into finished tablets and injectables. Much of that comes from a single source: China. If supply were disrupted, medicine production would stall.
PLI offered direct financial incentives to companies that increased domestic manufacturing of key starting materials and APIs, allocating ₹15,000 crore specifically for pharmaceuticals.
Evidence check — company annual reports

Laurus Labs (API and CDMO specialist): Revenue surged from $340M (FY 2020) to $578M (FY 2021), 70% year-on-year growth, then to $666M by FY 2025. The company expanded from six to twelve manufacturing facilities.

Sun Pharma grew from $4.0B (FY 2021) to $6.2B (FY 2025). Cipla from $2.1B to $3.3B. Biocon from $883M to $1.95B.

FY 2020–21 coincided with peak global pandemic-era pharma demand. The export surge reflects both PLI-driven capacity expansion and COVID-era supply needs. Disentangling the two effects precisely will require several more years of post-pandemic data.

2020 Bulk Drug Parks — Clusters for API Self-Reliance
Alongside PLI, the government approved dedicated industrial zones for API manufacturing: bulk drug parks with shared effluent treatment, testing labs, and logistics infrastructure. The goal was to reduce dependence on imported raw materials by making it cheaper to produce them domestically.
Evidence check — DGCIS import data

India’s bulk drug imports were $2.9B in FY 2015 and $4.6B in FY 2026. Domestic bulk drug exports grew from $2.9B to $4.9B over the same period.

Both imports and exports grew proportionally over this period. Most bulk drug parks are still under construction, and their effect on the import-to-export ratio will take several more years to appear in the aggregate numbers.

2025 TEPA — Opening the EFTA Corridor
The India–EFTA Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA) with Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein took effect on 1 October 2025. It covers 61,168 tariff concession lines. Of these, 7,428 fall in pharmaceutical and chemical chapters (HS 28, 29, and 30): 4,962 lines for organic chemicals and drug intermediates, 1,982 for inorganic chemicals used in manufacturing, and 484 for finished pharmaceutical products. This is a broader scope than the 487-code pharma export basket that defines the $31 billion figure above. The TEPA concessions extend to upstream chemicals and intermediates that feed the pharma supply chain.
Evidence check — early trade data

India’s pharma exports to Switzerland rose from $111M (FY 2024) to $144M (FY 2025). Exports to Norway went from $2.6M to $10.6M, and to Iceland from $1.2M to $5.5M over the same period. Monthly data for the first post-TEPA quarter (October–December 2025) shows steady but not yet elevated flows relative to the preceding months.

TEPA has been in force for less than six months of reported trade data. Its structural impact on the pharma corridor will become measurable from FY 2027 onwards.

2025 India–UK CETA — India’s Second-Largest Pharma Market
The United Kingdom is India’s second-largest single-country pharma export destination, receiving $903 million in FY 2026 (after the United States at $7.9 billion). Viewed from the UK side, India is the fifth-largest source of pharmaceutical imports, behind the US, Germany, Switzerland, and France.
The India–UK Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement, concluded in 2025, reduces tariffs across goods categories. While it does not contain pharma-specific provisions, it broadens access to a market where India’s pharmaceutical exports already have strong momentum.
Evidence check — UK import data

India’s pharma exports to the UK: $778M (FY 2024) → $914M (FY 2025) → $903M (FY 2026).

UK pharma imports from India: $550M (2022) → $669M (2023) → $774M (2024) → $832M (2025). That is a 51% increase in three years.

India’s competitors in the UK market (2024): US ($4.6B), Germany ($3.2B), Switzerland ($2.1B), France ($1.5B), India ($774M). India is the only major supplier from outside Europe and North America.

Not Just Manufacturing — Inventing

India filed 7,158 pharma patent applications in 2014. By 2024, that number reached 18,668 — a 2.6-fold increase in a decade. The sharpest acceleration came after 2020, when filings surged from 6,166 to over 18,000 in four years.

This matters because it signals a shift: India is not only making medicines invented elsewhere, but increasingly creating new compounds, formulations, and processes of its own.

7,158 → 18,668
Patent filings · 2014 to 2024
2.6×
Growth in a decade
Source. Indian pharma patent filings from IP India (filing date records). Counts cover pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical chemistry classifications.

The Companies Behind the Numbers

Policies do not export medicines — companies do. Revenue data from 410 company annual reports shows how India’s largest pharma firms grew over the reform decade. These are self-reported figures from each company’s published financial statements.

Sun Pharma
FY 2015 $4.5B
FY 2025 $6.2B
+38%
Cipla
FY 2016 $1.7B
FY 2024 $3.3B
+95%
Dr. Reddy’s
FY 2014 $2.2B
FY 2023 $3.0B
+36%
Laurus Labs
FY 2015 $159M
FY 2025 $666M
+319%
Biocon
FY 2021 $883M
FY 2025 $1.95B
+121%
Torrent Pharma
FY 2015 $560M
FY 2025 $1.38B
+146%
Source. Revenue figures from company annual reports (410 reports). All values converted to USD at prevailing exchange rates as reported by each company.

Background: The Broader Business Environment

India’s overall business environment also improved during this period. The World Bank’s Doing Business rank moved from 142nd (2014) to 63rd (2019), a jump of 79 places in five years, driven by GST, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and dozens of other reforms. But that was the economy-wide story. The pharma-specific evidence above, the export curve, the company growth, the patent filings, is what makes the case for medicine.

Data Sources

Sources. Pharma export data: DGCIS India (487 HS codes, “Drugs and Pharmaceuticals” commodity group). Company revenues: company annual reports. Patent filings: IP India. FDA sites: US FDA facility registration database. FDI: DPIIT Fact Sheet Q3 FY 2025–26. TEPA concessions: Ministry of Commerce notifications. UK import data: HMRC Overseas Trade Statistics. All trade values in US dollars.