Emerging Stronger: Bioscience Businesses In And Beyond The War On Covid-19

Despite the COVID crises, according to AIOCD AWACS the Indian Pharma Market registered a surprising growth of 8.9 per cent in March 2020 with some evidence of panic buying in chronic medicines. In the stock market too, pharma stocks have managed to retain investor interest amid deep fall in nearly every other sector. Nifty Pharma, at well over 7400 levels, is up by 20 per cent over the last month, and is showing the promise of crossing its 52-week high in the coming months.

- Manasee Kurlekar

The entire last year, we all were talking about the reduction in growth rate of the Indian economy. Yet, each industry and each company in turn, hoped for and tried to beat the slowdown and aimed for growth projections at a rate invariably higher than the GDP growth figures, till well into the new year 2020. Then the world started screeching to a halt in February and stopped nearly completely in March. Even the countries most reluctant to stop economic activity were forced to do so with the high numbers of infected people and much-higher than-anticipated percentages of death among those infected and symptomatic. Amid severe lockdowns across continents, the world scrambles to find and create more ventilators, more Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits and more healthcare resources to take care of the unprecedentedly overwhelming load of COVID-19 patients.

Estimates of the loss of production during the months of lockdown vary from industry to industry. The only sectors that are buzzing with activity, though with a different focus than usual, are Biotech, Clinical Research Organisations (CROs), Diagnostics, some part of Pharma and Medical Equipment industry, and some Healthcare facilities. However, even in the industries allowed to function in this pandemic, like food and pharmaceuticals, the production and distribution has suffered due to movement and transport restrictions. World Trade Organisation (WTO) estimates the decline in trade due to transport restrictions to be anywhere between 13 per cent and 32 per cent.

Recession