New Delhi, April 4
India’s drug export industry has kept growing through a turbulent stretch of global trade — a performance that speaks less to favourable conditions than to the sheer depth of demand the country’s medicine makers have built up over decades. Exports between April 2025 and February 2026 stood at $28.29bn, a 5.6% increase on the same period a year earlier, according to K Raja Bhanu, director general of the Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India (PHARMEXCIL).
Bhanu said the rise was driven by sustained international demand across a broad range of products, including formulations, biologicals, vaccines and Ayush goods, helping Indian drugmakers maintain growth in a volatile external environment.
“Despite global challenges, pharmaceutical exports have maintained growth momentum,” he said, describing the sector as one of the steadier performers within India’s wider export economy.
The latest figures extend a strong run from the previous year. In 2024-25, India’s pharmaceutical exports reached $30.47bn, a 9.4% year-on-year increase, even as exporters faced weaker pricing in some foreign markets and continued disruptions to global supply chains.
The pharmaceutical industry has increasingly emerged as one of India’s more dependable export earners, supported by demand for generic medicines, vaccines and other essential healthcare products. Officials say that the breadth of demand has helped insulate the sector from the sharper swings seen elsewhere in international trade.
Bhanu said the industry, currently estimated at about $60bn, could more than double in size by the end of the decade, reaching $130bn by 2030.
With only one month of the financial year left to be accounted for, the sector appears on course to close FY26 with another year of growth. Even so, analysts say the final tally could still be shaped by pricing trends in the US generics market and by ongoing regulatory scrutiny of some Indian manufacturing plants.
