Can AMTZ and Hyderabad's Medical Devices Park Make India a Medtech Maker?
India imports most of the medical devices its hospitals use. Two state-built clusters in Visakhapatnam and Hyderabad are trying to change that, with very different results so far.
Summary
- India imported about $8.2 billion of medical devices in 2023-24 against $3.8 billion of exports, and EY estimates 80% to 85% of devices in use are sourced abroad.
- AMTZ in Visakhapatnam shares expensive test and production facilities across tenants, but accounts of how many factories actually run there range from about ten to about 165. Hyderabad's Sultanpur park is smaller in ambition, nearly full, and exporting stents to more than 89 countries.
- Neither is a Silicon Valley yet. What decides it is policy continuity, and a founder choosing between them should weigh the certainty of each state's support as much as the facilities.
India trains doctors the world hires, runs one of the largest generic drug industries anywhere, and performs complex surgery at a fraction of Western prices. Yet the scanners, stents, ventilators and analysers in its hospitals are mostly made elsewhere.
EY's June 2025 study puts the domestic device market at about $12 billion in 2023-24, with imports of about $8.2 billion and exports of about $3.8 billion, and estimates that 80% to 85% of devices in use are imported. Government and industry estimates vary between 70% and 85%, but none of them is comfortable. For imaging, cancer diagnostics and molecular testing, dependence has historically been close to total.
Two state-led clusters in the south are the most serious attempts to change that. Their records so far are very different, and the difference is instructive for anyone deciding where to build.
The policy frame
The National Medical Devices Policy, approved in April 2023, aims to grow the sector from about $11 billion to $50 billion by 2030 and to lift India's share of the global market from about 1.5% to 10% to 12% over 25 years. Independent forecasters are more cautious on the near term. Mordor Intelligence, for one, puts the 2025 market at about $17 billion, growing at under 8% a year, which would fall well short of the 2030 target.
The tools are familiar: a production-linked incentive scheme for devices with an outlay of ₹3,420 crore, 100% foreign direct investment on the automatic route, and central support for four medical device parks, in Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. The two clusters in this piece are not among those four. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana built theirs on their own initiative, earlier and in parallel, which is both their strength and, as AMTZ shows, their exposure.
AMTZ: shared infrastructure as the product
The Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone was incorporated in April 2016 and sits on 270 acres at Nadupuru, on the edge of Visakhapatnam beside the steel plant. It is a state enterprise led by its founding chief executive, Dr Jitendra Sharma.
Its founding idea is sound. Making medical devices needs costly specialist facilities: electromagnetic compatibility and electrical safety labs, biomaterial testing, gamma irradiation for sterilisation, superconducting magnet manufacture for MRI, and 3D printing for prototypes. No small manufacturer can afford all of these. AMTZ built them once, for the whole zone, and rents access to every tenant. AMTZ itself claims this can cut a manufacturer's production cost by 40% to 50%; that is the zone's own estimate and should be tested against your own bill of materials.
Around the factories sits an innovation layer: the Kalam Institute of Health Technology for research and the MediValley incubator, backed by the Atal Innovation Mission. During COVID-19 the zone made ventilators, oxygen concentrators and RT-PCR kits at speed, which is when most of India first heard of it. In 2025 it opened a 1 lakh square foot World Trade Center tower for startups and a medical textiles testing laboratory.
The contested part: how full is it?
Here the accounts diverge sharply, and a founder or investor should know both. AMTZ's leadership has said about 165 manufacturers operate in the zone, including around 30 foreign companies, producing everything from syringes to MRI components. Medical Buyer's July 2024 report described a zone of about ten manufacturing units, restricted and largely neglected for five years under the previous state government, and Wikipedia's entry still describes "over 10" units.
We cannot reconcile those figures from the public record. The likely explanation is that they count different things: companies with a presence or a lease versus plants in steady production. Either way, the zone has not yet become the dense manufacturing hub of about 200 independent units its plan described, and its history shows the risk that sinks so much Indian industrial policy: a change of government can freeze a project that the previous government championed.
The infrastructure at AMTZ is real; whether it is used at the scale intended depends on politics more than engineering.
Hyderabad: the steadier operator
Telangana's Medical Devices Park at Sultanpur, near Patancheru in Sangareddy district, opened in 2017 on about 300 acres. It is home to more than 65 companies and has built its reputation on cardiology. The park is reported to hold Asia's largest stent manufacturing facility, with capacity for about a million stents and 1.25 million balloon catheters a year, and devices made there go to more than 89 countries. By early 2023, around 50 companies had committed about ₹1,500 crore and were expected to create around 7,000 direct jobs.
Its advantage is the city around it: a deep base of pharma, biotech and contract research talent, a cluster of life-sciences incubators, and good logistics through the Outer Ring Road and the airport. Its constraint is land. The park is close to full, and a planned second phase, meant to double the area, was still waiting to start in 2026. Success has created its own bottleneck.
So, a Silicon Valley of healthcare?
Not yet. What makes a valley is not a campus. It is a self-reinforcing loop of capital, talent, shared infrastructure, anchor customers and steady policy that lets a company grow from prototype to export without leaving the region. Visakhapatnam has the most ambitious shared-infrastructure model in the device world. Hyderabad has the track record, the exports and the talent pull. Both sit inside a national framework designed to bring manufacturing home.
What is missing is time, scale and continuity. Imports still dominate. AMTZ's real occupancy is disputed. Hyderabad's expansion is still on paper. A medtech manufacturing base needs these clusters to run for a decade without being reset by each election or budget.
What this means for a medtech founder or investor
- Choosing a location: AMTZ's shared labs can cut the capital needed to get a device tested and certified, which matters most for first-time manufacturers. Hyderabad offers a proven operating environment, suppliers and hiring depth, but little land. Weigh the continuity of state support as heavily as the facilities.
- Building the business model: the money in devices often comes after the sale, through consumables, service and software. Our piece on recurring revenue in medical equipment explains why a stent maker and an imaging maker have very different economics.
- Planning for software: new devices increasingly carry AI features that need separate validation. See what AI in medical devices actually does.
- Raising capital: investors will ask for PLI eligibility, certification timelines and export readiness. A clean plan on all three, and a manufacturing revenue system that shows by product line, shortens the conversation.
India proved in 2020 that it could make critical medical hardware quickly when it had the facilities and the will. The next test is doing it consistently, profitably and at the high end of the technology curve. SRF tracks this sector through its market intelligence work and advises founders in medtech.
How useful was this article?
One tap. It tells us what to write more of.
About the author
SRF Capital Studio
The next one
Get what we publish next, by email.
Working notes on raising, borrowing, protecting, growing and structuring capital in India. One email a week at most, and you can leave any time.
We use your address only to send this. See our privacy policy.
We store your address to send you these emails and nothing else. See our privacy policy.
Related reading
