KTR inaugurates SMT facility in Hyderabad's Sultanpur

Industries and IT Minister KT Rama Rao inaugurated the global hub for manufacturing and research and development unit of stent maker Sahajanand Medical Technologies (SMT) at the Medical Devices Park (MDP) at Sultanpur. This is the Phase I of company’s Project Sanjeevani.

SMT, which is India’s first and largest stent manufacturing company with a market share of over 30 per cent, is investing Rs 530 crore in the project. In the first phase, it has created a facility in about two lakh sq ft with a capacity to make three lakh balloon catheters here. The Hyderabad facility will eventually make more than one million stents and two million balloon catheters.

The company’s global hub for stent manufacturing and research hub will create direct employment to 2,000 people locally. In addition, the research wing will also employ about 300 scientists. “It is a matter of pride that Telangana through the medical devices park will immensely contribute to reducing the medical expenditure in the country. SMT’s unit will boost local manufacturing. About 70 countries will get made-in-Telangana, made-in-India products from this facility at Sultanpur,” he said.

The cost of angioplasty was around Rs six lakh in the 90s and that has now come down to about Rs one lakh. This was largely possible due to indigenous manufacturing of medical and devices and SMT has played a big role in this, Rama Rao said.

Founded in 1998, Sahajanand develops and manufactures cardiac products in India. Its product portfolio includes coronary stents (drug-eluting and bare-metal), renal stents, angioplasty balloon catheters and other cardiac accessories in India and abroad. The company has a manufacturing facility in Surat and a research and development centre in Dublin.

“Telangana State has recognised medical devices as a high potential area. We identified large players in the segment. SMT was one of them with potential to grow. We followed up relentlessly and the efforts fructified into Asia’s biggest



project. 

This is one of our big successes in our scientific approach to get investments to the State. TS is working with the industry for scaling up and systematic growth of the sector. The cluster will be a global factory and research hub,” Rama Rao said.

Telangana is already a key contributor to the pharma exports from the country. The State is also the vaccine capital of the world and accounts for one-third of the total vaccines used globally. More than 50 companies are setting up their operations at MDP with Rs 1,500 crore. 

The cluster will create about 7,000 direct jobs. Promea Therapeutics, Huwel Life Sciences, Akriti Oculoplasty, Arka Engineers, SVP Techno Engineers, Elvikon and Rees Medilife have already started their operations here. Big players like Medtronics and Confluent too have announced their investments in Hyderabad, Rama Rao said. P

ointing out that about 80 per cent of the medical devices used in the country are imported, Rama Rao urged the Centre to relook at its strategy and policies to be in line with the Make-in-India campaign.

“The intention to promote Indian manufacturing is good but the policy support needs to sync with that.

If that has to be successful, we have to think in terms of the difficulty in raising the capital, duty structure and other challenges entrepreneurs face in India,” he said.

Rama Rao asked the company to give pointers of the pain points faced by the industry. Telangana, which has been advocating policy changes and various interventions, will take up the issues with the Government of India. “If the import dependency is reduced, it will help in reducing the medical expenditure,” he said.

Devprasad Dasji Swami (Mahant Swaminarayan Gurukul) Sahajanand Group of Companies Chairman Dhirajlal Kotadia, SMT Managing Director Bhargav Dhirajlal Kotadia, Chief Executive Officer Ganesh Sabat and other officials were present at the inauguration.