Active Pharmaceutical Ingredientsare portions of any drug, which are active. Thus, depending on the drug’sadministered dosage, the reactions and results differ. Certain drugs arecomprised of more than one kind of API. APIs of good quality are essential for themanufacture of effective and safe medicines. Manufacturers use certainstandards to determine how strong the API is in each drug. However, thestandard can vary widely from one brand to another. One brand might use onetest, another a different one.
India has the world's third largestactive pharmaceutical ingredients (API) for the industry valued at a littleless than USD 2 bn. Top 5 API producers account for approximately 6.5 %.Thegrowth has been driven by many factors, such as legislative reforms, growth incontract manufacturing and outsourcing, value added foreign acquisitions andjoint ventures and India's acu-men and expertise in reverse engineering ofpatented drug molecules. India has, in the meantime, been trying to comply with the World TradeOrganization's Trade Related Intellectual Property Agreement (TRIPs)obligations.
Production of active pharmaceuticalingredients is a highly sophisticated and technically demanding process. Theglobal active pharmaceutical ingredient market is surging due to the increaseddemand for pharmaceutical drugs, which in turn is driven by aging population,increasing prevalence of chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes,cardiovascular, neurological and infectious diseases among others. The globalActive Pharmaceutical Ingredient market for was valued at US$ 12.9 bn in 2014and is estimated to reach US$ 21.9 billion by 2023 at a CAGR of 6.3% from 2015to 2023.