Looking to make Hyderabad world’s 'health-tech Mecca': KTR

The Telangana government would work on a programme to position the capital city Hyderabad as the “health-tech Mecca” of the world, information technology and industries minister KT Rama Rao said on February 24.

Addressing the inaugural session of the 20th edition of Telangana's flagship industry event, BioAsia 2023, Rao, better known as KTR, said the state has been a frontrunner in identifying the importance of life sciences, pharma and development of holistic healthcare.

“With our vision to develop, promote and propagate an enabling ecosystem, we are proud to state that Hyderabad is the only city in the country that has an ever-growing Genome Valley, an expanding Medtech Park and an upcoming Pharma City, which will be the world’s largest,” he said.

Telangana had set a target to take the value of the lifesciences ecosystem to $250 billion by 2030, the minister said.

“The state was aiming to reach $100 billion by 2028 but it had already touched $80 billion now and the remaining would be achieved by 2025 itself, a clear three years ahead of the set target,” he added.

Lauding the growth of the lifesciences sector, KTR said the sector was growing at an annual rate of 23 percent in the southern state for the last few years against the national average of 14 percent.

“The growth is evident from the fact that we have been able to attract net new investment of more than $ 3 billion over the last seven years.  During the same period, we have created total employment of more than 4.5 lakh jobs,” he added.

The minister said four of the top 10 global innovator companies had a direct presence in Hyderabad through their dedicated centres.

“These centres drive core R&D, digital and engineering activities, thereby contributing to bringing lifesaving cost-effective therapies and devices to patients worldwide,” he said.

The minister said that the government was making investments in the cell and gene therapy space to set up an institute of curative medicine in Hyderabad to provide affordable development and commercialisation of new-age therapies for diseases prevalent in India.

“We are the only region in the world to have more than 200 FDA-approved sites for pharmaceutical manufacturing which produce both innovator and generic medicines,” he said, referring to the American healthcare regulator.