Indegene sees tailwinds in the US, expanding in Europe

“A combination of ageing populations, rising incomes, and the fact that technology is at a stage where multiple options can be thrown in [means] this industry will continue to grow for a very long period of time,” Gupta said.

A large chunk of Indegene’s revenue (64% as of Q3FY25) comes from the top 20 global pharma companies. Most of these are based in the US and Europe, which account for over 95% of the company’s business.

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Besides leveraging its AI expertise to grow in the US, Indegene is also expanding its footprint in Europe, with a slew of investments and centres in the last few months.

Indegene offers commercial services to big pharma to market and sell their products and backend operations like regulatory submissions and data management.

US tailwinds

The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 focused on lowering prescription drug costs, increasing pricing pressure on US biopharma companies. The current administration has not yet stated its stance on this, but the industry is closely monitoring it.

“We have a practice around essentially pricing and market access in the US…that’s a very important area for us and pharma companies. That practice of ours is keeping a close eye,” Gupta said.

“For the last 25 years we’ve been in business, we’ve been hearing about drug pricing being under pressure…we believe that a little bit of that pressure will remain in this industry,” he added.

The pricing pressure and increasing regulatory complexities are leading more businesses to use technology and outsourcing processes. “Both in the US and the rest of the world, government policies, competitive dynamics and the very rapidly evolving technology landscape, we believe, will force biopharma to reimagine how they do commercialization and R&D. This will provide a big impetus to digital-first commercial services companies like Indegene in the next few years,” Gupta had told investors in an earnings call in January this year.

Gupta told Mint that Indegene has been integrating artificial intelligence into its offerings for the last decade. “A lot of things which we do have been using AI-based tools, and we have been delivering very differentiated outcomes to the industry across sales and marketing, medical affairs, regulatory, and safety using some of the AI tools we have made,” he said.

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Earlier this year, the company rolled out a generative AI-based platform, Cortex, which is an extension of its AI offerings.

A robust pipeline of drugs in the next 3-4 years is also expected to aid growth.

Europe expansion

In the last few months, the company has amped up its expansion in Europe. It currently gets 27% of its business from the region.

Earlier this month, it opened a new centre in London. The company also announced the acquisition of healthcare communications company MJL Communications Group Ltd through its subsidiary Indegene Ireland. In February, it launched a new entity in Spain as part of its strategic expansion.

“Many of the top 20 pharma companies are Europe-headquartered, to that extent, it’s going to be an important market,” Gupta said.

Indegene was listed on the stock exchanges last year. Gupta said the company’s revenue has grown from ₹33 crore in 2010 to over ₹2,500 crore in 2024. While he declined to share guidance for the near term, Gupta said he expects the company to grow multi-fold in the next five to seven years.