Hyderabad to become global leader in medical devices sector, says Shakti Nagappan

Hyderabad: With many factories getting operationalised in the Medical Devices Park, coupled with an enabling policy environment to help companies move up the value chain and build products of relevance not just for India but for the world, the city of Hyderabad is soon to become a global leader in the medical devices sector.

According to the officials, Telangana has been a front-runner in the field of life sciences and was also one of the first States in India to recognise medical devices as a high-potential and high growth sector. To address the issue of growing import dependence on medical devices in the country, the State government had established the Medical Devices Park in 2017. Within a short span of 5 years, the Medical Devices Park today is India's biggest functional medical devices cluster offering facilities that support innovation, research and development, manufacturing as well as warehousing and logistics.

The officials said that over 50 companies were setting up their R&D and manufacturing facilities in the park, generating over 7,000 jobs and attracting over Rs 1500 crore of investments. The park is home to Asia's largest stent manufacturing facility of SMT with capacity of a million stents and 1.25 mn balloon catheters. In addition, marquee companies like Medtronic, B-Braun, etc have also invested in the sector.

Life Sciences and Pharma Director Shakthi Nagappan said that this happened despite the Covid slowdown and it was because of Stable governance and policy support. The Medical Devices Park is a key enabler to our multi-pronged strategy of promoting the Life Sciences Ecosystem in the state of Telangana.

The State is already a powerhouse in the Life Sciences sector and in addition, Hyderabad has numerous companies with expertise in plastics, precision engineering, electronics, etc., all of which are vital for medical device innovators and manufacturers. As a natural outcome, the city is already making rapid strides in redefining healthcare, he said.

One of the recent success stories is of Akriti Ophthalmic Pvt. Ltd. Akriti was established in Medical Devices Park, Sultanpur, in 2018 and has provided employment to over 400 employees. The company is led by Dr Kuldeep Raizada, an eye care professional and Dr Deepa Rani Diddi an Alumni of King's College London. Akriti owns over 18 Patents and 27 copyrighted products for the global Market.

When the government decided to launch phase-II of the Kanti Velugu programme and was looking to procure 35 lakh spectacles, it didn't look far. Akriti manufactured and supplied over 10 lakh spectacle units to the government in a record time of 90 days.

The 100-day government programme aims towards a 'Avoidable blindness free' Telangana and provides universal eye screening and distribution of up to 60 lakh eyeglasses free of cost to those who require them.