New Delhi, September 13: India has become the world’s largest vaccine producer and the biggest supplier by volume, Union minister Jitendra Singh said on Sunday, pointing to the country’s growing biotechnology base and its ability to prepare for future epidemics.
Singh, who holds independent charge of the science and technology and earth sciences ministries, was speaking at a reception for the board and investors’ council of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), hosted by the Department of Biotechnology at the India International Centre in New Delhi. The meeting brought CEPI’s leadership back to India for the first time in a decade.
India supplies vaccines to more than 100 countries, accounts for close to 60 per cent of global vaccine production and meets over 65 per cent of the World Health Organization’s routine immunisation requirements, Singh said. He added that the country’s bioeconomy reached USD 195.3 billion in 2025, growing 18 per cent year-on-year, with the biopharma sector making up nearly 30 per cent of that total.
From manufacturing to advanced biologics
Singh said India has moved beyond its earlier reputation for low-cost vaccine manufacturing into advanced vaccine technologies and complex biological products, built on domestic research, manufacturing and clinical capabilities. He credited scientists such as Rajesh Gokhale, along with the wider scientific community, for building these capabilities.
He pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic as an example, when India developed vaccines quickly and then supplied them to other countries. He said this experience changed how the world views India’s scientific and technological capacity.
Singh also cited outcomes from the India-CEPI partnership, including GEMCOVAC-19, India’s first mRNA COVID-19 vaccine to receive emergency use authorisation, an inactivated Chikungunya vaccine candidate now in Phase II/III trials, and nanocage-based vaccine candidates for Monkeypox and related viruses that are at an advanced pre-clinical stage.
Shared laboratory and training network
The BRIC-THSTI Bioassay Laboratory, one of CEPI’s 17 centralised network laboratories, has supported eight vaccine candidates through various stages of development and tested more than one lakh samples, Singh said. Under the PACT programme, more than 2,400 participants from 14 countries have received training to build clinical trial capabilities in the region.
The Department of Biotechnology and the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council have worked with CEPI under a tripartite arrangement first signed in October 2019 and renewed in September 2025 for another five years. Singh said the next phase of this partnership should focus on universal and pan-pathogen vaccine development and wider biomanufacturing capability.