Biotechnology and the Global Market
According to Biotechnology Market Share, Size, Trends & Industry Analysis Report, the global biotechnology market size was valued at USD 449.06 billion in 2019. The report also stated that biotechnology applications in healthcare segment accounted for the largest share in the overall market. By 2026, the biotechnology market is estimated to reach revenue of $741.7bn.
This was pre-COVID, so the numbers could look different now. Although the need for Bio tech would only rise in a post-COVID world.

The reasons behind this big boom can be attributed to a number of factors:
The increasing demand for new drug advancements, and demands in personalised medicines as chronic diseases are rising. The WHO had projected that chronic diseases would account for almost three-quarters of all deaths worldwide as such diseases were ‘expected to increase to 57% by 2020’; the current Covid19 challenge faced globally seems to be an accentuation of the severity of this projection. There is also the rising incidence of persistent conditions such as diabetes and cancer globally that cannot be ignored.
The rise of agricultural biotechnology is another critical factor. The spike in demand for agro-based products (i.e. for sustenance and horticulture items) and the growing need for biotech practices in technical research is expected to provide a big push to the biotechnology market growth.
Then there’s also the perennial threat of more pandemics – as the current Covid19, and those in the past such as SARS, Ebola, H1N1 and MERS have proven. This reinforces the need for biotech companies to constantly be ahead of the curve in helping create an agile healthcare response, and be ready to take on future pandemics.
So, this brings us to our question – Is biotechnology the next big thing? Our answer is, yes, it is.
Whether it is DNA Sequencing or PCR technology, whether it is in Pharmaceuticals or Environmental Sciences, biotechnology touches a broad spectrum across various fields (in Fig 3: Major biotech fields, 2020)

Given its big reach, the industry is estimated to grow at a very high compounded annual rate, and the demand set to increase.