Centre Forms Inter-Ministerial Panel To Shape Rs 10,000-Crore Biopharma Shakti Hub Scheme

Last Updated:April 30, 2026, 09:44 IST

While the earlier biopharma mission focused on innovation and pipeline building, the new scheme will place greater emphasis on commercial manufacturing and product market readiness

The central government has formed an inter-ministerial panel to prepare and monitor the proposed Biopharma Shakti Hub scheme, a Rs 10,000-crore initiative announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Union Budget, aimed at positioning India as a global manufacturing base for next-generation biological medicines, News18 has learnt.

The panel brings together key stakeholders — the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) — signalling that the scheme will straddle research, regulation and manufacturing in equal measure.

“It is an inter-ministerial committee on the scheme. The work of the committee is to prepare the scheme and monitor it. It has Health, DBT, ICMR, CDSCO and others as members," a senior government official told News18, requesting anonymity.

The panel is headed by Manoj Joshi, Secretary, Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP).

Two meetings of the panel have already taken place; however, fine-tuning of the policy is still underway. When asked about a timeline for submitting recommendations, the official clarified that “there will be no report (for submission)… the Department of Pharmaceuticals would send the Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) proposal to the Department of Expenditure."

The official referred to the standard Expenditure Finance Committee route through which major government schemes are cleared, declining to share further details on timelines or when the scheme is likely to take its final shape.

Building on What Exists

The Biopharma Shakti Hub is being conceived as a natural progression of the National Biopharma Mission, a Cabinet-approved programme launched in 2017 under DBT and partly funded by the World Bank. That earlier initiative addressed gaps in translational research and product development by building multi-institutional research consortia linking academia and industry, clinical trial networks, shared testing infrastructure and technology transfer offices.

“Where the earlier mission focused on innovation and pipeline building, the new scheme will place greater emphasis on commercial manufacturing and market readiness," another senior government official, also part of the panel, told News18.

The official pointed to the list of several products that have already emerged from the previous National Biopharma Mission ecosystem — among them the world’s first DNA vaccine ZyCoV-D, India’s heterologous booster vaccine Corbevax, a biosimilar of Liraglutide, India’s first indigenous MRI scanner, single-use bioreactors, and vaccine candidates for chikungunya and dengue.

Major push towards biologics and biosimilars

India is known as the “pharmacy of the world" for its dominance in affordable generic medicines. The Biopharma Shakti Hub represents a deliberate push to expand that identity to biologics and biosimilars — therapies derived from living cells rather than chemical synthesis — which include monoclonal antibodies, gene therapies, and treatments for cancer, diabetes and autoimmune diseases.

Biosimilars, near-identical versions of biologic drugs developed after original patents expire, are seen as a particular opportunity for India given its proven cost-manufacturing advantages. “But scaling up this sector requires structured industry handholding, stronger regulatory coordination and faster translation of laboratory discoveries into commercial products. This is where the new scheme (under making) will work and help the industry. Right now, the guidelines are unclear," the second official said.

News india Centre Forms Inter-Ministerial Panel To Shape Rs 10,000-Crore Biopharma Shakti Hub Scheme

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