"India has been a manufacturing hub for vaccines … even before the pandemic, and should therefore be a strategic partner in the global inoculation against COVID-19," JPMorgan analysts wrote in a report last month.
Consulting firm Deloitte predicts that India will be second only to the U.S. in terms of coronavirus vaccine production this year. PS Easwaran, a partner at Deloitte India, said more than 3.5 billion COVID vaccines could be made in the country in 2021, compared to around 4 billion in the U.S.
Furthermore, companies in India are currently scaling up production to meet demand.
"We are expanding our annualized capacities to deliver 700 million doses of our intramuscular COVAXIN," said Indian firm Bharat Biotech, which developed a COVID vaccine together with the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research.