Hyderabad, Feb 18 (TNT): India’s Pharma and Life Sciences Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are cutting drug development timelines by one to two years and reducing R&D-to-launch costs by nearly five percentage points, according to a joint report released by KPMG in India and UnearthIQ at the BioAsia 2026 event here on wednesday.
The report stated that the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), automation and advanced analytics across the drug development value chain is compressing overall timelines from 10–15 years to 9–13 years, while R&D-to-launch costs have declined from 20–30 per cent to 15–25 per cent.
India currently hosts over 150 healthcare and life sciences GCCs employing more than 300,000 professionals, making it one of the largest global hubs for offshore innovation and capability centres in the sector., the report revealed.
According to the report, GCCs are accelerating early-stage research functions such as target identification, protein modelling and compound screening, reducing preclinical timelines by five to six years. In clinical trials, AI-enabled patient recruitment, protocol design and real-time analytics are shortening development cycles by four to six years and improving trial efficiency.
The ecosystem spans pharma (30–35 per cent), life sciences (20–25 per cent), medical devices (20–25 per cent), healthcare and health-tech (20 per cent), providers (10 per cent) and payers (5 per cent), it said.
The study also notes a structural shift in healthcare and MedTech GCCs from engineering support units to innovation-led product development hubs. Medical device development cycles have reduced from five to eight years to three to five years, while software-led margin leverage has improved from 10–15 per cent to 18–25 per cent.
Shalini Pillay, Partner and India Leader ,Global Capability Centres at KPMG in India, said the next phase of GCC evolution will be driven by deeper domain expertise and the integration of emerging technologied such as GenAI to deliver stronger business outcomes.
Gaurav Vasu and Shail Maniar, Co-founders of UnearthIQ, said the ecosystem is moving toward a “core-first” model, embedding capabilities across discovery, clinical development and digital health to directly impact patient outcomes.
TNT KS
Leave a Reply