India is home to an amazing diversity of plants, with over 46,000 plant species recorded and approximately 760 known to be harvested from the wild for use by India’s large herbal medicine industry. An immensely vast repository of traditional knowledge in therapeutically used plants adds to its rich biodiversity, giving India a clear leeway to become a major player in the growing herbal drug market. Awareness of this potential, largely through both governmental and non-governmental initiatives together with technological advancement has brought about phenomenal growth of the Indian herbal drug sector. Despite stringent regulation against exploitative hoarding of the nation’s plant wealth, illicit collection of rare and endangered plants still continues unchecked. Enforcement of enacted laws requires people’s awareness of the hazards faced by our valued ecosystems. The need of the hour is to minimize destructive utilization of medicinal plant resources by replacing conservative cultivation methods with newer agro-technological breeding techniques. In order to step up India’s share in the global herbal market, there is an urgent need to showcase the worthiness of our traditional herbal products in the international market by developing newer approaches to their standardization to meet WHO requirements. A well-established herbal drug market complemented with adequately modernized and regulated traditional medical systems akin to China shall go a long way in tackling the nation’s growing disease burden.