India today stands at an inflection point in its nutraceutical journey. Blessed with one of the world’s richest biodiversities, a centuries-old tradition of Ayurveda and botanical knowledge, a strong food processing ecosystem, and growing scientific capabilities, the country possesses all the ingredients needed to emerge as a global nutraceutical powerhouse. Yet one critical ingredient remains underdeveloped- innovation.
I recently had the opportunity to represent the nutraceutical industry at a consultation convened by the Ministry of Food Processing Industries to review the impact of Production Linked Incentive (PLI) 1.0 schemes and explore ideas for a future PLI 2.0. While production incentives have undoubtedly accelerated manufacturing in several sectors, nutraceuticals present a unique opportunity. Rather than rewarding only increased production, India should consider complementing manufacturing incentives with a Performance-Linked Innovation (PLI) framework that rewards the creation of science-backed, intellectual property-driven products capable of becoming global “Bharat Brands.”
The distinction is important. Manufacturing creates volume. Innovation creates value. Manufacturing can increase exports. Innovation creates brands that command premium pricing, customer loyalty, and global recognition.
For decades, India has largely exported botanical ingredients, herbal extracts, and bulk nutraceuticals while many international companies have transformed similar ingredients into premium global brands. If India aspires to move beyond being the world’s supplier of raw materials and become the world’s source of trusted nutraceutical brands, innovation must become the centre-piece of national strategy.
What Do I Mean by the Term “Nutrinnovation”?
It represents an innovation ecosystem that integrates discovery, formulation, clinical validation, intellectual property, advanced manufacturing, and global commercialization to create next-generation nutraceutical products and brands. It should encompass the entire value chain – from discovery of novel bioactive ingredients and advanced extraction technologies to formulation science, clinical validation, intellectual property, regulatory excellence, and global brand building. It is this integrated approach that converts traditional knowledge into internationally accepted healthcare products.
Two contrasting international case studies vividly illustrate why science matters.
The first serves as a cautionary tale. In the United States, Quincy Bioscience launched Prevagen, a dietary supplement marketed for memory improvement and cognitive enhancement. Despite extensive marketing, the product’s efficacy claims came under scrutiny from regulators. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission challenged the company’s advertising, arguing that the evidence did not adequately support the claims being made. The litigation highlighted an important lesson for the nutraceutical industry: commercial success built primarily on marketing, without sufficiently robust scientific substantiation, eventually faces credibility challenges. Regardless of legal nuances, the episode reinforced a universal principle – consumer trust is difficult to build and easy to lose when scientific evidence is weak.
The second case study demonstrates the opposite approach. A French company, Horphag Research, transformed an extract from French maritime pine bark into one of the world’s most successful nutraceutical brands – Pycnogenol. Rather than selling it merely as a botanical extract, the company invested over several decades in standardization, quality assurance, intellectual property, and, most importantly, clinical research. Today, Pycnogenol is supported by more than 15 randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials involving approximately 700 participants across multiple therapeutic areas. This sustained investment in evidence has helped establish global physician confidence, consumer trust, and a business estimated to generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
The contrast between these two examples is striking.
One relied heavily on marketing and encountered regulatory headwinds because scientific evidence was questioned. The other invested patiently in rigorous science, creating enduring brand equity that continues to deliver commercial success across international markets.
This distinction is highly relevant for India.
India possesses an extraordinary wealth of medicinal plants, botanicals, traditional food ingredients, functional foods, probiotics, and bioactive phytochemicals that remain vastly underexplored for their potential as evidence-based dietary supplements and globally differentiated nutraceutical products. Modern nutritional science, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, metabolomics, and precision nutrition now provide unprecedented opportunities to identify novel health benefits, optimize formulations, and generate globally acceptable clinical evidence.
Imagine if India could systematically mine its vast repository of medicinal plants and traditional knowledge to identify novel bioactive molecules or phytochemical combinations with previously unrecognized therapeutic potential. By combining ethnobotanical insights with modern pharmacology, genomics, metabolomics, and artificial intelligence, these candidates could be investigated in preclinical models to elucidate new mechanisms of action, validate novel molecular targets, and generate patentable intellectual property. Subsequent well-designed clinical studies could establish their role as evidence-based adjuncts to standard therapies, demonstrating meaningful improvements in patient outcomes across chronic diseases. Such a translational innovation pathway would transform India’s botanical wealth from a source of commodity extracts into a pipeline of differentiated, science-backed nutraceuticals capable of earning global regulatory acceptance, physician confidence, consumer trust, and premium brand positioning. The real opportunity, therefore, lies not merely in exporting herbal ingredients, but in creating globally recognized Bharat Brands founded on innovation, intellectual property, rigorous clinical evidence, and measurable health impact.
Innovation incentives could also stimulate collaboration between industry, academia, clinical research organisations, food technologists, and medical institutions. India’s pharmaceutical sector has demonstrated that sustained investment in scientific capability can create global leadership. The nutraceutical industry can follow a similar trajectory while leveraging India’s unique strengths in food, agriculture, and traditional knowledge.
The ultimate objective should not merely be to manufacture more nutraceuticals. It should be to create globally respected brands that consumers associate with scientific credibility, safety, quality, and efficacy.
The vision aligns perfectly with the broader aspiration of building a self-reliant and innovation-driven India. Ancient wisdom may provide the inspiration and manufacturing may provide the scale, but only innovation can create a global Bharat Brand. Science provides credibility. Innovation creates differentiation. Together, they create enduring global brands.
India has every reason to believe it can become a world leader in nutraceutical innovation. What is needed now is a policy framework that rewards companies willing to invest in research, intellectual property, clinical evidence, and global brand creation.
If the first phase of industrial policy rewarded production, perhaps the next phase should reward innovation.
Because the future of India’s nutraceutical industry will not be defined by how much we produce – it will be defined by what we invent, what we validate, and what the world chooses to trust as the next great Bharat Brand.
