Ingredion, the US-based maker of pharmaceutical excipients and food ingredients, is eyeing acquisitions and partnerships to crack the Indian market and also use it as a base for exports.

In an interview to ET, Jim Zallie, president and CEO of Ingredion, said he is betting big on India, given its rising economy, industry friendly policies and growing market for pharmaceuticals and food ingredients.

“Ingredion has been in the pharmaceutical industry for many, many decades. So, it’s only natural that we look at India for both food and pharma with a lot of optimism, and a lot of excitement,” Zallie said.

The $7 billion (CY2021) company by revenues entered India a decade ago, but after couple of years of prospecting it decided last year to accelerate with the acquisitions of two small pharma specialty companies – Ahmedabad-based Amishi Drugs and Malegaon-based Mannitab Pharma Specialties from M.B. Sugars.

Amishi makes excipients such as superdisintegrants, lubricants, and viscosifiers, complementing Ingredion’s own portfolio of starch, mannitol, and dextrose product offerings, while Mannitab produces spray dried mannitol used as an excipient in the making tablets and other formulations.

An excipient is an inactive substance that’s used in formulating medicines.

“We supply higher value ingredients for the pharmaceutical industry, such as pharmaceutical grade dextrose, starches, mannitol, polyols, and other excipients that are used in tablets. So, India is obviously a very, very important large market today,” Zallie said.Along with pharmaceutical excipients, which drives half of Ingredion sales in India, Zallie said he is open for investments in food ingredient business in India in form of acquisitions, partnerships and organic expansion in food ingredients such as texturisers, sugar reduction, specialty sweeteners and plant based proteins.

Ingredion sells about 1000 food ingredients globally.

“We understand how to improve the texture and taste of foods, anything that we can do to expand our capabilities to do that in India, we want to do that. We are also a very big player in plant-based proteins. So, feeding the planet more sustainably. We’d like to explore India as well. And then lastly, anything we can do to enhance our stevia franchise (sugar reduction) in India; so anything that can help lead to a more healthy lifestyle that fits with our purpose as a company,” Zallie said.

Zallie said he anticipates the integration of the two acquired businesses will allow the India business to grow at double-digit net sales, and expects it to double in 3-5 years.

India falls under part of Asia-Pacific region, which has contributed about $1 billion sales to Ingredion.