The 129-year-old Swiss CDMO giant chose Hyderabad after evaluating multiple locations, citing specialised talent and infrastructure — a significant endorsement for the city’s life sciences ambitions
Lonza Group AG, one of the world’s leading contract development and manufacturing organizations, announced on March 5, 2026 that it will establish a Global Capability Centre in Hyderabad. The Basel-headquartered company — which employs roughly 20,000 people globally and operates more than 30 development and manufacturing sites across North America, Europe, and Asia — selected Hyderabad after evaluating multiple locations, citing “the availability of specialised talent and supporting infrastructure.”
The centre will handle operational, digital, and scientific functions that support Lonza’s work with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies worldwide. In practical terms, that means roles spanning clinical data management, supply chain optimization for drug manufacturing, digital quality systems, and pharma regulatory compliance. Lonza is looking for professionals who sit at the intersection of technology and biopharma — a combination that Hyderabad, with its dual concentration of life sciences and technology talent, is positioned to supply.
The strategic logic is straightforward. A company running 30+ sites across three continents needs a centralized hub that can serve that distributed footprint with consistency and speed. Hyderabad is being built to do exactly that — not as a regional office, but as the operational and digital backbone for Lonza’s global network.
For Hyderabad, this matters beyond the jobs it creates. The city already hosts Genome Valley, India’s largest life sciences cluster. Lonza’s arrival adds a different dimension — a global CDMO trusting Hyderabad not just with manufacturing proximity but with the digital and R&D support infrastructure that underpins drug development worldwide. That is a meaningful step up in the kind of biopharma capability the city can credibly claim. Hyderabad has spent years positioning itself as a life sciences hub. Lonza’s decision is the kind of external validation that accelerates that narrative considerably.