Boom Or Bust For Asian Healthcare?

Asia Pacific (APAC) is leaping with novel innovations while connecting the APAC market with global trends. Life sciences sector remains an attractive industry for investment from both strategic players and financial investors. The accelerated R&D activities amidst the pandemic attracted both outward direct investment (ODI) and foreign direct investment (FDI) in potential bio-pharma sectors at an estimated size of $40.25 billion in 2021. The surge in the pandemic is burgeoning consumer demand for innovative and potential healthcare products with the emerging digital health tech market. Thus, it’s essential to statistically analyse the perspective of the investment attractiveness in the APAC economy and translate it into a quantitative score to benchmark the performance of innovation and investments. Let’s gather some industry perspective on policy strengths and challenges in the markets for different stakeholders.

- Hithaishi C Bhaskar

Being the largest pharma market hub and the land of innovative therapeutics, Asian countries have always been leading the ever competitive biopharmaceutical ecosystem. Yet, identifying potential healthcare assets from the large pool of available deals will lead to challenges, especially if the market is opaque. The ability to evaluate consumer needs, competitive dynamics, regulatory pressures, differences among geographies, and emerging sectors will be the gauge to measure, understand, and compare performing economies. Often it is difficult to obtain accurate and comprehensive evidence on the relevant markets.

According to Market Data Forecast, the size of the APAC biopharmaceutical market witnessed a market size worth $40.25 billion in 2021 and is estimated to be growing at a CAGR of 10 per cent reaching $64.96 billion by 2026. Asian populace is swelling and thus the ageing population with increased awareness to generic drugs, biological drugs, and synthetic therapeutics. The market is also driven by increasing investment in R&D, cost-effective manufacturing plants, bio parks, efficient logistics, an intricate supply chain, and a highlyskilled workforce at low expenditures.

Investments drivers

The healthcare assets in APAC are experiencing an incremental deal value and volume, enlarging the venture capital zone and intensifying the capital investments. Experts observed a heightened investor interest amidst the pandemic with a significant impact on biopharma market trends and entrepreneurship, shifting R&D focus through novel scalable technologies.