India’s pharma success offers Ayurveda a blueprint for turning centuries of knowledge into global trust and scale
A few decades ago, India depended heavily on the world for medicines. Today, the Indian pharmaceutical industry supplies medicines to more than 190 countries and accounts for 20 per cent of global generic medicine volume.
India’s pharmaceutical exports for 2024-25 are approximately $30.5 billion. Compared to just $1.9 billion in 2000–01, this transformation is impressive. It was not handed to the Indian industry; it was built, brick by brick.
Indian pharma grew in an environment of limited resources and restricted access to technology. Companies learnt to reverse-engineer molecules, develop efficient manufacturing processes, build scientific capabilities and eventually meet some of the world’s most demanding regulatory standards. The real achievement was not that India learnt to manufacture medicines cheaply; it was that Indian companies learnt to create quality at scale.
That is where the conversation with Ayurveda becomes interesting. The Western consumer is already buying botanical products. US sales of herbal dietary supplements reached an estimated $13.2 billion in 2024, according to the American Botanical Council’s market report. The European Medicines Agency has a dedicated Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products and a traditional-use registration route for certain products with established histories of medicinal use. So, the issue is not that the world is sceptical of plant-based medicine. The question, then, is how to structure the fragmented Indian Ayurveda industry for success in this growing market.
More from OpinionThe lesson is not the molecule. It is the capability.
Ayurveda already possesses a vast knowledge base, thousands of formulations and centuries of accumulated experience. But knowledge is only the raw material. Capability is what turns raw material into an industry.
Indian pharma did not become global simply because India had chemists or because medicines were cheaper to manufacture here. It built capabilities around research, process development, quality assurance, intellectual property, regulatory affairs, clinical evidence, manufacturing and global marketing. Ayurveda will have to build comparable capabilities around its own knowledge base.
When Indian generics changed the global HIV market
Perhaps the most powerful illustration is the HIV/AIDS crisis. In 2001, Cipla famously offered an antiretroviral combination for AIDS treatment to Médecins Sans Frontières for $350 per patient per year. At the time, comparable treatment in the United States could cost around $10,400 annually. Cipla challenged the assumption that sophisticated HIV treatment had to remain unaffordable for much of the developing world.
That model subsequently became an important part of the global HIV-access movement. Bill Clinton’s HIV/AIDS initiative worked with governments and manufacturers to negotiate lower prices and expand access to quality-assured medicines, including through Indian generic manufacturers such as Cipla and Ranbaxy.
The Indian generic industry changed the economics of access. The lesson is profound: Indian pharma did not merely enter the global market. At moments, it changed the terms on which the global market operated.
Don’t patent the past. Innovate the future.
Ashwagandha offers a fascinating marketing lesson. Ashwagandha has been part of Ayurvedic knowledge for centuries. But companies have demonstrated that significant commercial value can be created around how an ingredient is extracted, standardised, researched, manufactured and branded.
A pioneering company from the United States of America transformed this familiar herb into a proprietary, trademarked ingredient with a defined specification, research programme and brand identity that can appear on the products of other companies’ products. This is ingredient branding, something pharmaceutical and consumer industries understand extremely well.
The principle is familiar in other industries: a consumer may buy product from one company, but a trusted brand component or the ingredient within it can become part of the product’s value proposition. Traditional knowledge creates an important intellectual-property challenge. You cannot simply claim ownership over knowledge that has existed for centuries.
The opportunity may lie in the innovation around the knowledge, novel extraction processes, formulations, delivery systems, manufacturing processes, validated applications, clinical evidence, trade secrets and strong trademarks.
The question, therefore, should not only be, “Can I patent this herb?”. It should be, “What have I invented around this herb?”
India challenges the Denmark report
The Ashwagandha success has another aspect which has not received enough attention. In 2020, a Danish Technical University (DTU) assessment raised concerns about the safety of Ashwagandha, its potential effects on the liver and thyroid, prompting several European regulators to review its use. Indian experts argued that the conclusions relied heavily on preclinical evidence and did not adequately reflect the long history of traditional use or the growing body of human clinical research.
The Ministry of Ayush constituted an expert committee of endocrinologists, pharmacologists, gastroenterologists and Ayurveda specialists to examine the findings and the wider scientific literature. The committee argued that the Danish assessment relied substantially on animal and laboratory studies, including studies on parts of the plant such as leaves, stems and berries, while the traditional medicinal use in question primarily concerns the root. The Ministry has subsequently maintained that the DTU conclusions require reconsideration and has described the report’s influence on regulatory decisions in other countries as a potential non-tariff barrier to Indian Ashwagandha.
What is significant here is that the government responded by commissioning a scientific counter-review rather than relying only on an appeal to tradition. That is precisely the mindset Ayurveda will need if it wants to operate credibly in global markets: when challenged on evidence, respond with better evidence.
From heritage to global trust
Ayurveda does not need to become conventional pharmaceutical medicine. Nor should it abandon its philosophical foundations to satisfy every contemporary scientific framework. But heritage alone will not be enough. Regulation cannot be treated merely as a hurdle. It can become a passport. Indian pharma learnt this lesson early on. Global markets demanded documentation, manufacturing standards, quality systems, clinical evidence and regulatory discipline.
Indian pharma’s journey offers a possible model for success. Take what you have, build capability around it, prove what can be proved, protect what can be protected, regulate what must be regulated, partner intelligently and learn to communicate value to the world.
The opportunity before Ayurveda is therefore not another revival. It is an industrial, scientific and intellectual transformation. The next question is whether Ayurveda can make the journey, from being admired as heritage to being trusted as a modern knowledge system. Heritage gets you attention. Evidence earns your trust. Capability takes you global.
(Anu Lall is Founder of TKS Foundation, lawyer and author, with a career in the pharmaceutical and technology industries across Asia, the United States and Europe. JB Gupta is Senior R&D executive with global Pharma & Biotech companies. Distinguished scientist, Ministry of Ayush, Government of India. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)