Bayer AG Chief Executive Officer Bill Anderson has set a clear target for India: making it one of the company’s top markets by 2030. The German life sciences conglomerate is backing that ambition with investments across its three divisions — crop science, pharmaceuticals and consumer health.
Speaking exclusively to CNBC-TV18 in Bengaluru, where he inaugurated Bayer’s new innovation hub, Anderson said India is no longer being positioned as a back-office or support centre for global operations. Instead, the work emerging from the Bengaluru facility — spanning imaging research and development, pharmaceutical research and crop science genetics — supports Bayer’s global workforce of about 88,000 employees.
“This innovation hub — it’s not back office and it’s not just for India. The work we’re doing here is supporting the 88,000 people we have around the world,” Anderson said.
The remarks mark one of the most direct public commitments by Bayer’s global leadership about India’s role in its long-term growth strategy. Anderson, who spent a week travelling across Varanasi, Delhi and Bengaluru and is scheduled to visit Jaipur next, said India currently does not rank among Bayer’s top markets but is expected to get there within the decade.
“Today, India is not in the top markets. But it’s certainly our every intention that it will be. We want India to be a top country for us by 2030, not 2047,” he said, adding that the opportunity spans all three of Bayer’s businesses.
Bengaluru not just a back office
Bayer already has a sizeable footprint in India. The company employs around 13,000 people in the country and has operated here for more than 130 years. Its presence includes a data science and analytics centre in Hyderabad, a global capability centre in Mumbai, a global business centre and the newly expanded digital and R&D hub in Bengaluru. Crop science currently remains Bayer’s largest business in India by revenue.
Anderson emphasised that the shift underway is less about scale and more about the nature of the work being done in India. He described the country as moving from a centre of execution to a centre of intellectual and research output, pointing to the growing number of global R&D mandates now based in Bengaluru.
“This is an innovation hub — it’s not a back office and it’s not just for India. The work we’re doing here is supporting the 88,000 people we have around the world,” he reiterated.
Investment across all three divisions
When asked about the highlight of his India visit, Anderson pointed to a cluster of farms outside Varanasi where Bayer runs its Better Life Farming centres. The initiative now operates at around 1,500 locations across India, providing smallholder farmers with seeds, crop protection products, access to credit, agronomic advice and increasingly drone-based pesticide spraying.
Anderson recounted meeting three women in their twenties running stores in their villages through the programme. Initially viewed with scepticism, they have now become central figures in their communities, an example he cited of the initiative’s impact.
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Bayer says the network currently reaches about 30 million smallholder farmers in India. The company has also trained around 10,000 “Drone Didis” as drone pilots, enabling pesticide spraying of a hectare in about 30 minutes — a task that would otherwise take one to two days using manual sprayers.
While crop science accounts for the largest share of Bayer’s India revenue today, Anderson said the company’s growth investments are being distributed across all three divisions.
“We’re investing in all three divisions. We’re not investing more in one than another. We’re going in all of them,” he said.
In consumer health, Bayer holds strong positions in nutrition supplements and headache relief through brands such as Supradyn and Saridon. Anderson said the focus now is on expanding distribution to reach lower-income segments.
In pharmaceuticals, the company is expanding its cardiovascular therapy portfolio and has introduced new clinical data in heart failure — an area Anderson linked to rising heat exposure and increasing cardiac stress risks in India.
Decision-making moving closer to India
On whether India could evolve into a genuine decision-making centre rather than just a delivery hub, Anderson pointed to a broader organisational overhaul underway at Bayer.
Over the past two-and-a-half years, the company has implemented what it calls “Dynamic Shared Ownership”, eliminating roughly two-thirds of management positions globally and pushing decision-making authority closer to operational teams. The average management span has expanded from six direct reports to around sixteen.
As Bayer expands its talent base in India, Anderson said decision-making authority is expected to shift accordingly.
“We’ve created a model that’s putting the decision making where the resources are. And we’re significantly expanding our talent in India and putting the decision making with it,” he said.
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He cited a recent example: a new crop science field testing facility outside Bengaluru that would typically take two to three years to build was completed in just eight months by a local team operating under the new structure.
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