Here’s why foreign investors are looking for investments in Indian API business

The portfolio management services firm, Marcellus Investment Managers doubling its bet on Divi’s Laboratories, one of the top active pharma ingredients (API) manufacturers in India, with regards to the fast emerging opportunities in the bulk drug and custom pharmaceuticals manufacturing space.

“We doubled down on Dr Lal PathLabs through the summer; will hold us in good stead. We are doubling down on Divi’s Lab as we speak, courtesy the API and that will hold us in good stead and that to my mind is investing,” Saurabh Mukherjea, Founder of the firm, told CNBC-TV18.

Talking about APIs, he said, “It is pretty clear that America wants to freeze China out of the whole digital ecosystem, whether it is semiconductors, artificial intelligence. And as a result the foreign investors are keen to see just how much of the API industry, remember China's API industry is 9-times India size, just how much of that can India grab.”

Therefore, said Mukherjea, the foreign investors are traveling around the country both looking for investments to make and looking for Indian partners in the API.

Even as India has had good capability in API manufacturing, the country's large drug formulation manufacturing sector has been depending on cheap Chinese imports in the last several years. Though this had significantly narrowed down the investments in the Indian API industry in the recent past, the trend is now getting reversed with most big pharma players either want to find substitutes for China or make direct or indirect investments in Indian API industry for captive use. While several top Indian pharma companies, including Sun Pharmaceuticals Industries, Aurobindo Pharma, Dr Reddy's Lab, Glenmark among others,  are now making backward integration adding API manufacturing back into their active portfolio, the foreign companies are making indirect investments here or partnering with Indian API companies.

The firm has Divi’s Lab in its largecap portfolio, GMM Pfaudler in midcap and Paushak in smallcap, he said.

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