‘If you are still, you are gone’

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: Even at 84, Indravadan A Modi is in the pink of health. Pretty much like his company, the Rs 800-crore Ahmedabad-based pharma major Cadila Pharmaceuticals Limited (CPL), which has not only beaten the economic slowdown but has also clocked an impressive growth rate of over 12%. Quips the octogenarian with a glint in his eyes, “That’s because people need more medicines to combat the ill-effects of recession!”

The tenacious fighter believes it’s the “survival instinct” that keeps him going even at an age when most people have resigned themselves to the travails of their twilight years. He maintains that “if you’re still, you’re gone.” Small wonder then that despite having handed over the functional reigns of his closely-held company to son Rajeev I Modi almost 20 years ago, the patriarch still comes to his office daily at 10 am sharp and leaves only by 6 in the evening. For the company, his is a benign presence, always there to lend a helping hand or render invaluable advice or even evolve long-term strategies for a company which he has not only sired but nurtured since its inception way back in 1951.

“When I completed my graduation in pharmacy, I knew that I have not only to work, but also to grow. I also realised that India as a nation could not afford not to have a presence in the healthcare industry,” Modi reminisces. Together with a college friend, the late Ramanbhai Patel (who later went on to become the chairman of the Rs 1,100-crore Zydus Cadila group), Modi started Cadila with a seed capital of Rs 25,000 and no employees in a residential area in a three-room rented apartment.

“At that time,” recalls Modi, “people didn’t think we in India could produce medicines. But our goal was clear: to set up a pharmaceutical unit, which would indigenously manufacture life-saving drugs at affordable prices.” That, however, was easier said than done. Modi narrates how their first product Pregnisolone was priced at Re 1 compared to the prevailing market price of Rs 7 way back in 1953. “I remember a doctor whom I visited to market my product asking me if it was Pregnisolone that I was selling or chalk? I told him that just as he was a qualified doctor, I was a qualified pharmacist and nationalist at heart and would never market fake or spurious medicines.”