A nine-month wait to get a phone connection and a three-year wait to build her office, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, chairperson and managing director of Biocon, dared to launch an enterprise when licence raj was at its peak in India. Thinking big bordered on the criminal, but Mazumdar Shaw plunged right in. Today, her success story is considered a business legend.
?When I set up the company in 1978, it was an oppressive time for Indian industry. There were foreign exchange constraints, bank credit constraints, limitations on production, no infrastructure or communication; so whatever you tried to do, you had to do in a very small, measured way. If I were to build my company today, I would not have taken 30 years to make it what it is. I would have done it in five,? she says when we meet her in her now plush office in Bangalore.
Photographs of her in the company of presidents and global leaders crowd the walls. The mantle, too, is heavy with various awards, including a Padma Bhushan. There are other laurels too?TIME magazine?s 100 most influential people in the world, a mention on the Forbes? list of 100 most powerful women, and the Financial Times? list of top 50 women in business.
She takes us down memory lane, as she recalls how her tryst with biotechnology began when she joined an Irish biopharmaceuticals company as a trainee manager in 1978, before founding Biocon the same year. And though her small industrial enzymes manufacturing operation started with a seed capital of just R10,000, within a year, Biocon had become the first Indian company to export enzymes to customers in the US and Europe. By 1989, it was receiving funding from the US to develop proprietary technologies.
?Despite the extreme challenges, the advantage was nobody knew about new technologies like IT and BT, and it was not a very closely regulated market. To some extent, I had the freedom to grow,? she recalls.
But the turning point for Biocon, she feels, was its IPO in 2004, which was oversubscribed 33 times, and its first day closed with a market value of $1.1 billion, making it the second Indian company to cross the $1-billion mark on the first day of listing at that time.
Today, Mazumdar Shaw is worth $900 million, not only emerging as one of the richest women in India but also shaping the history of biotechnology in the country. And, Biocon is one of India?s largest biopharma companies and the seventh-largest biotech employer in the world.
However, she also feels people have been unfair to the sector, often comparing it to IT. ?IT and BT are not the same. We are an over-regulated market, with hurdles at every stage of growth. Biotech has a huge role to play for a country like India, which needs food security, healthcare sustainability and energy security. If the industry has to grow, the government needs to enable, and not throttle it like it is doing today,? she says.
As she points to the moratorium on Bt Brinjal, ?Why should anybody invest in Indian biotech, knowing that after you have done everything you have been asked to do, put in millions of dollars, a minister can say ?No, I won?t allow you to take this to the market? right at the very end??
Despite these challenges, she believes Indian biotech has done well to reach $4 billion in revenue for the fiscal year 2010-11. Ranked amongst the top 12 biotech destinations globally, it is expected to become a $10-billion industry by 2015.The next step, she feels, is for the industry to get together and persuade the government to introduce directly beneficial regulatory changes.
Ranked 20th globally amongst biotech companies, Biocon is now eyeing a position in the top five in the next five years. Insugen, Biocon?s insulin, is currently a R50-crore brand, which she expects would reach R100 crore in three years. ?In terms of value creation, we are close to $2 billion, but that is not enough. The next step for us is to create a huge brand value for Biocon through branded formulations,? she adds.
In the next three years, Biocon revenues are expected to touch $1 billion. Syngene, its contract research and manufacturing subsidiary, is slated for public listing in 2013. A year ago, Biocon entered a $350 million global marketing agreement for its insulin products with pharmaceuticals major Pfizer, and is expecting to form several other such alliances for its products.
On the products front, she believes the company is not far from bringing novel ?made in India? drugs to the market, changing the ?copy-cat? perception that Indian biotech has been plagued with.
She is currently drafting a document that will outline policy-level changes that India might require in order to leverage the bio-manufacturing opportunity that will be presented, as $70 billion worth of biotech drugs go off patent over the next ten years. ?We are working on bringing some semblance to the regulatory framework and streamline it. Approval timelines are longer than even the FDI, which is far more stringent qualitatively. Just the time required for approvals is eating into benefits of cost and speed of development we enjoy,? she says.
Kiran Mazumdar Shaw
CMD, Biocon
Date of birth
March 23, 1953
EDUCATION
Bishop Cotton Girl?s High School, Bangalore
BSc, zoology honours, Mount Carmel College, Bangalore University
Post-graduation in malting and brewing, Ballarat College, Melbourne University, Australia
Financial Status
India?s fourth-richest woman with a net worth of $900 million
Holds 39.64% stake in Biocon (79,287,564 equity shares)
Awards
Padma Shri ? 1989
Padma Bhushan ? 2005
Express Pharmaceutical Leadership Summit Award for Dynamic Entrepreneur ? 2009
Nikkei Asia Prize for Regional Growth ? 2009
?Technology Pioneer? recognition by World Economic Forum
The Indian Chamber of Commerce Lifetime Achievement Award