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India needs stronger standardisation in nutraceuticals without which expansion is difficult: Suresh Garg
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Nandita Vijayasimha, Bengaluru
May 30 , 2026
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India needs stronger standardisation in the nutraceutical sector, without which sustainable expansion and global competitiveness become difficult. Uniform regulations, quality benchmarks, and scientific validation are essential to ensure consumer safety, build trust, and encourage innovation, said Suresh Garg, founder and CMD, Zeon Lifesciences.
The nutraceutical industry has expanded rapidly. Hence, quality control stops being a regulatory formality but is central to credibility itself. A nutraceutical product manufactured in India today may eventually sit on shelves in Europe, US, South East Asia, or Middle East. Each market follows different expectations around ingredient approvals, labelling norms, permissible claims, and safety standards. Without stronger standardisation, expansion becomes difficult very quickly, he added.
Consumers demand details about sourcing, scientific backing, manufacturing quality, traceability. They are no longer buying products only because they are labelled as ‘natural’ or ‘herbal.’ They want evidence, safety, and transparency alongside wellness claims, he noted.
The industry has also reached a stage where weak quality systems carry larger consequences than before. Product recalls, misleading claims, contamination risks, and non-compliance issues can damage not just individual brands, but confidence in the category itself. Here standardisation creates consistency across manufacturing, testing, ingredient specifications, and product performance while also making global expansion smoother for Indian manufacturers, Garg said.
Over the last few years, regulation for nutraceuticals has become more structured, science-oriented, and considerably aligned with international expectations. Much of that transition has happened under FSSAI’s evolving framework for health supplements, nutraceuticals, functional foods, and novel ingredients. This industry operates at an intersection as it combines food, wellness, and pharmaceuticals.
Without clearer regulation, ambiguity around claims, ingredients, safety standards, and consumer communication was inevitable.
There is now stronger emphasis on evidence-backed claims, ingredient traceability, labelling transparency, digital compliance systems like FoSCoS, and stricter quality monitoring. Scientific substantiation is increasingly becoming an expectation rather than an optional addition. We are seeing Indian nutraceutical companies entering markets where compliance standards are progressively tighter. Regulatory maturity is not only about consumer safety anymore but it is about global competitiveness, he said.
Perhaps the industry’s greatest challenge is that nutraceuticals does not operate within a single global regulatory language. A product recognised as a dietary supplement in one country may face entirely different levels of scrutiny in another. Ingredient approvals vary across regions, standards for health claims are inconsistent, and even packaging and labelling requirements differ significantly from one market to the next. This means that companies entering overseas markets cannot treat compliance as a one-time exercise. It becomes an ongoing process requiring continuous monitoring, scientific validation, regulatory awareness, and strong internal quality systems.
It is here we see the industry is gradually moving away from marketing-led growth towards research-led credibility. This shift is changing how serious companies approach manufacturing. Therefore, R&D is not limited to product innovation instead it shapes quality assurance, regulatory compliance, ingredient validation, stability testing, and long-term consumer trust.
Companies investing in scientific research are better positioned to create formulations which are genuinely effective and globally compliant. The next phase of innovation is to develop personalised nutrition, clean-label products, probiotics, plant-based supplements, targeted wellness formulations. It is this which eventually drives credibility in the nutraceutical space, said Garg.
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