USD 100 billion nutraceutical market of India: An opportunity in making

India has 7000 plants that contribute to medicines/ nutraceuticals and 1200 plants are actively traded.

Today, Curcumin and Ashwagandha combined together commands over $278 million globally.

By Amit Srivastava

India is poised to be a $10 trillion economy by 2030. There also exist opportunities to enable and empower industries that have inherent powers to contribute to economy. One such industry is nutraceuticals that stand alone can contribute $100 billion by 2030.

Currently, global nutraceutical market is $400 billion. Around 60% of this is in the USA and India currently stands at 2%. India with current contribution of $8 billion has immediate capability to ramp up to $40 billion by 2024 if basic tweaks in policies and supports are given to this industry.

To set the context, let’s first understand that nutraceutical is a specialized industry where nutrition is designed with evidence based health outcomes as key focus. The ingredients of the nutraceuticals come from plant sources, biotechnology, and animals. India has a head start with Ayurveda. India has 7000 plants that contribute to medicines/ nutraceuticals and 1200 plants are actively traded. To make a sense of what each plant could contribute to is to take a look at success story of Ashwagandha and Curcumin.

Both plant sources have been there in use in traditional Indian medicine, but they did not have compelling story for global believability. Both plant sources took to global focus when their value was validated through modern science backed by clinical trials.

Today Curcumin and Ashwagandha combined together commands over $278 million globally. Imagine if we could go through same exercise to 1200 actively traded plants. Even if we target top 20, we are looking at around $8 billion. With focus of only 20 ingredients being added a year into scientific validation, India can look forward to contribute about $30 billion purely from plants.

Let’s delve into what nutraceuticals is and what’s needed to make it a $100 billion industry in India by 2030.

Nutraceuticals features in between food and drugs with strong orientation towards drugs as this industry is driven by science, health outcomes, clinical trials, etc. The pillars of nutraceuticals industry are 1) Medicinal plants standardized farming, 2) Active Nutraceutical Ingredients (ANI) 3) Formulations 4) Start-UP ecosystem , 5) Academia.

The power of five that awaits to be unleashed to take India to $40 billion market by 2024.

India has the power of 52 Agroclimatic zones. This brings to us the opportunity of having highest variety of medicinal plants that can be grown in India. This strength remains mostly untapped. The rich lead of Ayurveda that awaits clinical validation as per modern science protocols. The strength of Indian pharmaceutical formulation and clinical validation practice is yet to be leveraged in nutraceuticals. The evolved food tech industry’s formulation knowledge has not well percolated into nutraceuticals.

The US market access

India enjoys one of the best relations with USA. However the support from government to create exposure to Indian nutraceutical innovators is missing.

The challenges that’s resisting the nutraceutical powerhouse of India  are that there is no dedicated industry body, no HSN codes- Industry under pressure to comply to irrelevant HSN codes, no dedicated regulatory authority, no educational infrastructure, no incentive, grants and investment programs and no support to internationalization of nutra industry

Some key areas that can come up as solution for business empowerment are internationalization initiatives like the UNPA-India Initiative,  empowering Shefexil and its industry promotion program, solving biodiversity confusions, policy for HSN codes, policy for Industry specific PLI schemes, creation of Industry specific Investment tools, incorporating under National Medicinal Plans, identifying top 10 products to focus on- for global leadership, regulatory and human resource capacity building, rewrite/edit Indian Ayurveda Pharmacopoeia, setting up FSSAI nutraceutical policies and the way its processed and academia collaboration for giving space to innovations.

India has rare winning proposition to be a global leader in nutraceuticals outside of USA with revenues in range of USD 100 billion by 2030 yet it remains cornered due to its entangled counterproductive policies.  Nutrify Today is working consistently with Indian nutraceuticals industry, International bodies and government offices to enable and empower the nutraceutical industry of India. Nutrify Today is one of the largest idea to commercialization technology platform for nutraceutical industry worldwide.

(The author is Chief Catalyst, Nutrify Today, Bengaluru. The article is for informational purposes only. Please consult health experts and medical professionals before starting any therapy or medication. Views expressed are personal and do not reflect the official position or policy of the Financial Express Online.)

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