AI to Power India Pharma’s Shift from Volume Leader to Global Innovation Hub

Leaders from Indian and global pharmaceutical companies, public policy, and frontier AI research came together to examine how artificial intelligence can accelerate India’s transition from the “pharmacy of the world” to a global innovation powerhouse.

The panel featured:

• Sharvil Patel, MD, Zydus Lifesciences & President, Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA)
• Winselow Tucker, President & GM (India), Eli Lilly and Company
• Amit Sheth, Founding Director, India AI Research Organisation (IAIRO) & Professor, University of South Carolina
• Sudarshan Jain, Secretary General, Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance
  Moderated by Priyanka Aggarwal, MDSP & India Healthcare Lead, Boston Consulting Group.

India currently supplies ~20 per cent of global generic medicines and ~60 per cent of vaccines, reaching over 190 countries. However, achieving the Viksit Bharat 2047 ambition of building a USD 500 billion pharmaceutical industry requires a structural pivot from volume to value. With more than two-thirds of global pharma value concentrated in innovative medicines, expansion through scale alone will not suffice.

AI, the panel noted, is emerging as a foundational enabler across drug discovery, clinical development, manufacturing, regulatory systems, and patient engagement.

“Building the ISRO of AI — With Pharma as a Flagship Sector”

Dr Amit Sheth explained IAIRO’s mission:

“Just as ISRO represents not only innovation but national importance, IAIRO is designed to build sovereign, world-class AI capability in India.”

He outlined three priorities:

“First, to create world-class AI talent in India.
Second, to generate original intellectual property and move rapidly from research to products.
Third, to work with startups and corporates to create near-term economic impact.”

On the choice of pharma as a flagship sector, he noted:

“Pharma is one of the highest R&D-investing industries globally. The value creation potential is enormous, and AI can have an immediate and measurable impact.”

Practical AI Deployment Areas Identified

Dr. Sheth highlighted near-term collaboration areas between IAIRO and IPA member companies:

• AI-powered knowledge graphs that extract insights from millions of scientific documents to accelerate discovery
• AI-driven molecular and small-molecule design
• Clinical trial workflow optimisation and regulatory readiness
• Manufacturing anomaly detection and root-cause analysis
• Regulatory intelligence systems that embed compliance directly into process workflows

“These are practical opportunities where AI can deliver measurable results in the near term,” he said.

Trust and Explainability at the Core

Addressing concerns around AI reliability, Dr. Sheth emphasised the importance of explainability and alignment in regulated industries.

“When you take generative AI, it is largely black-box and probabilistic. In medicine, that is not enough.”

IAIRO is building neuro-symbolic AI systems that combine neural models with structured knowledge grounded in medical vocabulary and regulatory guidelines.

“Understanding comes by grounding AI into the frameworks and terminology that doctors and regulators use.”

Embedding domain knowledge and policy alignment directly into AI systems makes outputs more explainable, repeatable, and trustworthy essential for pharmaceutical applications.

The discussion concluded that the key question is not whether AI will transform pharma, but how deliberately and quickly Indian pharma can leverage AI to move from being the world’s largest supplier by volume to one of its most valuable innovation ecosystems.