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India can become global hub for high-quality nutritional ingredients
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Thursday, 22 October, 2026, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Prashant Nagre
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Adequate daily consumption of nutritional ingredients across populations can have a significant influence on global health. These essential compounds support immune function, cognition, growth, reproduction, blood formation, bone health, energy metabolism, and healthy ageing. Despite their importance, deficiencies remain widespread across populations and geographies, driving sustained demand for nutritional ingredients used in supplements, fortified foods, infant nutrition, clinical nutrition, and public-health programmes.
The commercial opportunity is substantial. The global vitamin-and-mineral-premix market was valued at approximately $7.13 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $11.91 billion by 2033, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 6.7 per cent. Another estimate places the global micronutrient-premix market at $3.8 billion in 2025, growing to $6.8 billion by 2034.2 Although estimates vary by market, the outlook points to a steady global demand for nutritional ingredients.
This presents a compelling opportunity for India to become a major producer and exporter of high-quality nutritional ingredients. The country's pharmaceutical and chemical-manufacturing base, technical workforce, analytical infrastructure, regulatory expertise and experience with large-scale production provide a strong foundation, making India a strong contender as a trusted world supplier.
India’s manufacturing strength
Over decades, India's pharmaceutical and chemical industries have developed expertise in chemical synthesis and fermentation, purification, granulation and encapsulation, analytical testing and quality assurance, and regulatory documentation. These capabilities are relevant to manufacturing vitamins, mineral salts, chelated minerals, amino acids, fortification agents, and nutritional-ingredient premixes. India thus has the necessary foundation for manufacturing.
With consistent control of identity, potency, and purity; microbial quality; impurities and heavy metals; residual solvents; and physical characteristics such as particle size, flow, solubility, and dispersibility, this adds further credibility to its position as the supplier of choice.
To achieve this, Indian companies are strengthening themselves by applying pharmaceutical-quality process controls to nutritional ingredients. This includes validated manufacturing processes, qualified equipment, controlled environmental conditions, robust cleaning procedures, trained personnel, and comprehensive batch documentation.
Scientific capability
Manufacturing capability is only one part of the opportunity. Nutritional ingredients are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with growing interest in specialised vitamins and minerals, amino acids, probiotics and prebiotics, botanical extracts, specialised lipids, and other bioactive ingredients.
India's large pool of scientists, pharmacists, chemists, engineers and food-technology professionals supports this transition. Its research institutions, universities, analytical laboratories and private-sector R&D capabilities provide an ecosystem for formulation, process optimisation, analytical testing and product development. This creates an opportunity to move beyond commodity manufacturing towards science-led, application-specific nutritional solutions.
Quality at competitive cost
India also has the potential to offer an attractive combination of quality and cost competitiveness. Its established pharmaceutical and chemical ecosystem provides access to manufacturing infrastructure, engineering capabilities, skilled technical workforce and supporting industries.
The opportunity, however, is not simply to compete on price. Global customers seek suppliers that can demonstrate consistent quality, regulatory compliance, traceability, documentation and supply reliability. Indian manufacturers are moving towards bringing these capabilities together to offer high quality at a competitive total cost, rather than competing solely as low-cost suppliers.
Driving nutritional ingredient innovation
India has developed strong capabilities in scientific expertise, established R&D and advanced manufacturing base. Indian companies are increasingly developing ingredient and specialised premixes. By integrating research, process development and scalable manufacturing, India is strengthening its ability to deliver differentiated, science-led nutritional ingredients that address evolving consumer and industry needs.
Strong foundation for global supply
India's experience in supplying pharmaceutical products and ingredients to international markets is another significant advantage. Indian manufacturers are familiar with customer audits, stringent specifications, quality systems, technical documentation and diverse regulatory expectations. This experience translates into greater confidence among international buyers of nutritional ingredients. Robust quality management, analytical testing, traceability and transparent documentation can help Indian companies meet the demanding expectations of global customers.
India is most likely to benefit from the growing need to diversify global supply chains. Manufacturers worldwide are looking for reliable alternative sources to reduce dependence on individual geographies. India's combination of manufacturing scale, technical talent, domestic demand, and export experience positions it well to become an important additional source of nutritional ingredients.
Moreover, India is well placed to meet global expectations for supply-chain traceability. Established quality systems, qualified supplier networks, documented raw-material origins, contaminant testing, transparent certificates of analysis and digital batch tracking provide the foundation for supply-chain visibility.
Strengthening regulatory readiness
India already has a strong foundation of regulatory understanding through its well-established pharmaceutical industry, which routinely navigates stringent domestic and international requirements. This experience gives Indian manufacturers a valuable advantage in understanding global expectations around ingredient identity, safety, purity, contaminants, manufacturing practices, labelling and technical documentation. By applying this regulatory expertise to nutritional ingredients and keeping pace with evolving standards across key export markets, Indian companies can better anticipate requirements, develop compliant products, and provide robust supporting documentation.
Making sustainability a core capability
Indian manufacturers are also working towards meeting global expectations for sustainability. Capabilities in energy-efficient processing, water conservation, solvent recovery, waste reduction, responsible sourcing and lower-impact packaging are being enhanced to support the sustainability expectations of international customers.
India: Trusted source for global nutrition
India has the capabilities, expertise and readiness to meet the world’s growing demand for high-quality nutritional ingredients. With a proven foundation in science, manufacturing, quality and regulatory expertise, India is already well positioned to be a trusted global source of high-quality nutritional ingredients.
(The author is managing director at Fermenta Biotech)
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