Opportunities for Indian Life Sciences & Health Companies to Fuel Next Wave of Growth in Indo-Dutch Trade Relations

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India: The Dutch Life Sciences and Health (LHS) sector has identified India as one of the few countries of key focus under its renewed global strategy.

NFIA helps 250+ Indian Companies settle in Holland
More synergies in Digital, E-health & R&D expected to enhance knowledge ecosystem of both countries and create more jobs
Indian Life Sciences and Health (LSH) Innovators Eye Netherlands as emerging export gateway to Europe post Brexit

​The Dutch Life Sciences and Health (LHS) sector has identified India as one of the few countries of key focus under its renewed global strategy. LSH is one of the priority sectors designated by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs for its ability to address global social problems. With this, the stage is set to take existing Indo-Dutch cross-over business collaboration in LSH into the next phase of growth.

In this context, The Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA) hosted a panel discussion on ‘business and innovation opportunities for Indian companies in the Dutch LHS sector’ at the World Trade Centre in Bengaluru on 29th May, 2019.

The participants from NFIA included Mr. Jeroen Nijland, Commissioner of the NFIA and Ms. Sandra de Wild, the NFIA’s LSH sector specialist. Other panelists were Taslimarif Saiyed, Director, C-CAMP; Raja Mugasimangalam - CEO, Genotypic Technology and Kedar Medhi - Director, Philips Healthworks from Bengaluru.

NFIA helped over 250 Indian businesses

NFIA since its inception in 2009 has helped over 250+ Indian companies settle in the Netherlands. These companies have employed over 18000 people. Of the 250+ companies, 20 of the leading pharma giants such as Serum Institute of India, Dr. Reddys, Lupin, Sun Pharma etc. leverage the Dutch ecosystem for global growth and expansion. To quote Prashant Savla, Head of Logistics and Finance for Sun Pharma, “Amsterdam is a prime base of operations from which to further expand our share in the growing European market.”

According to Mr. Nijland, “these are interesting times in the Indo-Dutch bi-lateral trade relations. The relocation of European Medical Agency from UK to Amsterdam post Brexit enhances the prospect of the Netherlands as an export gateway to Europe for Indian LSH companies.”

“The Netherlands is focusing itself on strengthening the international LSH ecosystem. NFIA and our regional partners have set up a strong team for this, supported by the Dutch government. We believe that India’s strengths combined with Netherlands’ prowess in Therapeutics & Vaccines, Diagnostics, Medtech and E-Health areas can solve pressing health challenges for the world,” he adds.

India and the Netherlands share an ecosystem

Based on the participation of NFIA in the international working group LSH, the sector specialist, Ms. Sandra de Wild stressed upon, “the emerging synergies in digital, e-health and research collaboration that will enhance the knowledge ecosystem in the Netherlands and create new jobs in both countries. The Netherlands is a global leader in patents in LSH and ranks 2nd in patent application for biotech in the world. What we have noticed specifically from Bangalore is a spike in biotech and pharma related projects dealing with AI and digital health in the last 1.5 years, making us bullish about this market.”

Elaborating on this, she adds, “in 2018, Netherlands had exceeded it’s investment targets, garnering €1.7 billion from 250 green-field investments. We are targeting €1 billion fund flows every year from at least 205 greenfield investment projects alone.”

“While New Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai house large pharmaceutical companies, Bangalore’s e-health and high-tech start-ups in imaging, 3-D Bio printing and AI provide excellent opportunities for the next-wave of innovative partnerships from India,” she concludes.