AI-led GCCs expedite drug development cycles, lower costs, says report

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India’s pharma and life sciences global capability centres (GCCs) are cutting drug development timelines by one to two years and lowering end-to-end R&D-to-launch costs by about five percentage points, driven by the adoption of AI and automation, a report released on February 18 has said.

The study by KPMG in India and UnearthIQ, a research advisory firm, has said end-to-end deployment of AI is compressing overall drug development cycles from the traditional 10 to 15 years to about nine to 13 years, while R&D-to-launch costs have brought down from 20 to 30 percent of total spend to 15 to 25 percent.

The efficiency gains are freeing up scientific and engineering talent from routine work and redirecting teams towards higher-impact innovation.

“Across R&D and preclinical development, GCCs are accelerating target identification, protein modelling and compound screening, enabling early-stage drug development timelines to be cut by five to six years through the use of AI, automation and advanced analytics,” the report read.

In clinical trials, AI-led patient recruitment, trial design and real-time analytics are shortening development cycles by four to six years while improving success rates, the report added.

Shalini Pillay, Partner and India Leader for Global Capability Centres at KPMG in India, said the next phase of the GCC model will be driven by deeper business context and core domain expertise.

“Leveraging emerging technologies and GenAI to address core, sector-specific challenges will be critical to unlocking stronger returns, as GCCs invest in integrated data structures, build deep techno-functional capabilities, and tap into ecosystem partnerships,” Pillay said.

India is home to over more than 150 healthcare and life sciences GCCs employing over 300,000 professionals.

The ecosystem is moving beyond a linear maturity model, with enterprises, technology partners and talent adopting a core-first approach across discovery, clinical and digital health, Gaurav Vasu and Shail Maniar, co-founders of UnearthIQ, said .