India was not even a footnote in JPM 2026
I was at the JPM health conference in SF last week - the most important bio/health gathering in the world. Pharma C-exes, biotech/techbio founders, and investors all congregate in SF to set the narratives for the year (and kick-start a superspreader event).
I had dozens of conversations and attended tens of satellite events.
India never came up. Not once.
I started asking people explicitly. One person said they’d heard India mentioned - once.
In the most relevant health/bio conference on the planet, India was not even a footnote.
Meanwhile, China dominated the entire conversation, along with AI.
Why does this matter?
Aside from India being one of the largest and fastest-growing markets in bio/heatlh -
India likes to see herself as an emerging pharma/bio leader ‘pharmacy of the world’. This rings hollow. Yes, we manufacture a ton of generics/vaccines but as some (like Soham Sankaran and others) have pointed out, we have not moved past the lowest rung of the value-chain. We do not compete on the global scale
Yet, China is dominating with the same advantages that India has in plenty. The Indian arbitrage in talent + data + speed is real. We know this well at Dognosis, where we ran a 3k ppt study in 1yr at <$100k total. India has (almost) all the ingredients to compete with China + leapfrog past the US
AI is commoditizing discovery and preclinical is already outsourced. The bottleneck + value-capture is increasingly in clinical and real-world validation. This is exactly where India’s arbitrage lies
As bits and atoms are commoditized with AI and robotics, cells (and keeping them healthy for as long as possible) are the natural complement that will take larger chunks of GDP. Health/bio is one of India’s best shots to becoming rich in the 21st century.
Yet, as of 2026, we’re not even a footnote. What would it take for this to change in 2028?
The clinical validation angle is sharp. Real-world evidence in diverse populations isnt just cost arbitrage, its a competitive moat. Ran a small trial last year with patient cohorts impossible toassemble in the US and the data quality surprised us. But the perception gap is huge - even strong indian clinical work barely registers at JPM.