Pharma, life sciences GCCs in India lower drug development timelines: Report
The report by KPMG in India and UnearthIQ highlighted how pharma and life sciences GCCs are leveraging AI to bring in measurable gains and lower drug development time.
The pharmaceutical and life sciences global capability centres (GCCs) in India are compressing drug development timelines from 10–15 years to 9–13 years, a report said on Wednesday.
The report, titled “Making it matter: How GCCs transform capability into end‑patient impact,” by KPMG in India and UnearthIQ, noted that end-to-end adoption of AI, automation, and advanced analytics across the value chain is compressing drug development timelines.
The efficiency gains free R&D teams from routine tasks, redirecting talent toward bold, high-impact innovation. As a result, R&D-to-launch costs have declined from 20–30% to 15–25%, the report highlighted.
Across R&D and pre-clinical development, GCCs are accelerating target identification, protein modelling, and compound screening, cutting early-stage timelines by 5–6 years.
In clinical trials, AI-driven patient recruitment, trial design, and real-time analytics are shortening development cycles by 4–6 years and improving success rates.
Shalini Pillay, Partner and India Leader – GCC, KPMG in India, said, “The next phase of evolution of the GCC model, as it moves up the maturity curve, will be driven by the business context and core sector/domain knowledge. Leveraging emerging technologies and GenAI to impact the core sectoral challenges is what will drive significant outcomes and truly unlock the RoI.”
According to the report, India today hosts over 150 healthcare and life sciences GCCs, spanning R&D centres, global business services, global shared services, and centres of excellence, and employing over 3 lakh professionals.
“The GCCs, technology and innovation hubs focused on streamlining the underlying data structures, integrating technology across the core value chain, investing in techno-functional capabilities, and leveraging the wider ecosystem to fuel research and innovation, will pave the way forward for global healthcare and life sciences players,” Pillay remarked.
The landscape is dominated by GCCs in pharma (30–35%), life sciences (20–25%), and medical devices (20–25%), with a growing presence across healthcare and healthtech (20%), providers (10%), and payers (5%).
“The healthcare and life sciences GCC ecosystem in India is evolving beyond the traditional maturity model. With enterprises, technology partners, and talent coming together, both established and new GCCs are adopting a core-first approach, building capabilities across discovery, clinical, and digital health to become integral innovation hubs shaping global patient outcomes,” said Gaurav Vasu and Shail Maniar, Co-founders of UnearthIQ.
Healthcare and medtech GCCs in India are also undergoing a sharp shift, from traditional engineering support to innovation-led product development hubs, largely driven by embedding AI platforms, digital engineering, and regulatory automation across R&D, design, manufacturing, and compliance, the report added.