Push for innovation
Supportive policymaking is helping bolster these cities’ potential to attract people, companies, and capital.
For instance, Hyderabad has come to the fore as a preferred location for pharmaceutical companies, attracted by the city’s integrated pharmaceutical ecosystem from research to manufacturing, to set up their research and development (R&D) units.
The city’s success as a pharmaceutical and life sciences hub can be largely attributed to government-led infrastructure development, such as the Genome Valley R&D cluster and the Hyderabad Pharma City for R&D and manufacturing, which has convinced global pharmaceutical firms including Aurobindo, Laurus, Sai Life and Syngene to expand their business operations in the city.
The Indian government is also in the midst of drafting a policy to accelerate R&D and innovation efforts with the aim of transforming India into a leader in drug discovery and medical devices.
Another city making waves in the sector is Suzhou, China, which ranked 10th globally for venture capital funding in the life sciences sector from 2018 to 2020, according to Crunchbase.
Similar biomedicine clusters that are home to major biopharmaceutical and biotech companies have been built to support the city government’s vision of becoming the Pharmacy Valley of China by 2030. To achieve this vision, the city also offers incentives of up to 60 million yuan (US$9.43 million) for companies to set up their regional headquarters.
Creating these innovation clusters has already yielded results for the Chinese city. One of its biomedicine clusters, BioBAY, houses two of the companies that recently developed China’s first mRNA-based and first DNA-based COVID-19 vaccines.
