Intermediate

Picture a multi step recipe where the raw ingredients are transformed into a partially prepared component, not yet the finished dish, but no longer the raw ingredients either, before a final round of cooking completes the meal. An intermediate is exactly that midpoint chemical compound in pharmaceutical manufacturing.

An intermediate is produced partway through the multi step chemical synthesis that turns a Key Starting Material into a finished Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient, and a single API can sometimes require several distinct intermediates, each one a separate manufacturing step, before the process is complete. Companies across the pharma supply chain often specialise at different points along this chain, some focused purely on producing intermediates for others to purchase and take further, others integrated across the entire chain from KSM through to finished API.

How many of these intermediate manufacturing steps a company controls in house, rather than buying in from outside suppliers, is a genuine measure of how backward integrated, and how insulated from external supply disruption, an Indian pharma or chemical company actually is.