As a young girl she was always inspired by the image of a knight. But when Swati Piramal, director, Strategic Alliances and Communications of the Rs 3,000- crore Piramal Healthcare Ltd, thinks of a knight in a sari, she can?t stop smiling.
Three years back when the French Government decided to honour her with Chevalier de l?Ordre National du Merite (Knight of the Order of Merit), it was one award she readily accepted. ?I read about the award and saw the image of a knight. She is the symbol of liberty and justice and is used on the coins in France. I was pretty kicked about the award. I wear the blue ribbon of the award when I go to France. This time I met President Sarkozy and was wearing the ribbon with my Sari. I think of a knight in a sari and can?t stop smiling,? she giggles, biting into Pizza over a lunch meeting.
Swati is an unusual mix. She might wear pink chiffons and pearls and diamonds but going into a slum is not something that she will bat her eyelid about.? I have quite a few crazy ideas,? she says.
Born into a business family, Swati found her own world in books. ?My favourite memories of childhood are curling up with a book in some corner in the house.? That that she had no inclination for business comes from the fact that she studied medicine at Bombay University. In fact she was still studying when she got married to Ajay Piramal, now the chairman of Nicholas Piramal India Ltd. And one of the things that settled her quickly into her new life was the fact that her father-in-law promised to let her work in the medical field and also open a hospital for her. But soon after, he passed away and her brother-in-law fulfilled his wish and set up Piramal Memorial Hospital.
And once the hospital was established, there was no looking back for the young enthusiastic new doctor. ?I was marketing manager, accounts manager, doctor, service person etc. Day and night, I did everything,? remembers Swati.
Ask her how she handled being a newly married young girl, handling so many roles and she smiles in return. ?I never think anything is too much. I have this cheerful, positive attitude. I never let anything get me down and always look for something new to do. I guess that is what leads to progress. The hospital became big place, which became an industry, and then a pharma company. We were into textiles, so I said why not venture into the knowledge industry. And we are where we are, counted as one of the big companies,? she says.
What also made the resolve steadier was the situation her husband Ajay and she found themselves in. A few years after her father-in-law passed away, the family business was divided. A year-long textile strike only made things more difficult.
?Those were crazy times. We were nearing bankruptcy and had no office. That?s when we thought of shifting from what was the old economy kind of business to new economy.?
Hope flickered when the two heard of an Australian multinational (Nicholas Laboratories) being up for sale. Swati still remembers the head at Nicholas asking her husband if he had worked in pharma business. ?He said ?No, but I have this vision of taking this company I buy to the top five.? This guy at Nicholas said, ?You?ve got to be joking. There is Glaxo, and there is Pfizer. You think you can ever beat them?? When Ajay said yes, this man decided to give it to us despite the fact that there were people bidding more simply because I think he saw this young man with a vision.?
Today Nicholas Piramal is the fourth-largest pharmaceutical company in India with over 10,000 employees. Ask Swati how they came so far and she puts it rather simply, ?It was an uphill task, but we managed.?
What is interesting about Swati is the fact that her calm exterior doesn?t show the fire within. But get talking to her and you know how she grew from a Rs 11-crore company (Nicholas Limited) into one of the best in the country.
?Our dream is to discover a drug in India and take it to the world. It takes 10 or 12 years to discover a drug and out of the 100 times you try, 99 times, you fail. I want to be the one to succeed. So this business is not for the faint hearted. But you have to dream today about tomorrow, only then will you succeed.?
As a young woman, she had to switch roles between being a successful career woman and a mother. Today her daughter Nandini is ready to be a part if the company and her son Anand is completing his higher studies at Harvard and wants to do something in the healthcare in rural areas. ?So I guess I?ve passed on some of my crazy ideas to my children,? she laughs. Ask Swati how she managed the roles and pat comes the reply, ?For me, there is no such thing as work, so everyday is a holiday. I like doing everything I do and that is why I do it.?
A reason why she probably shattered the proverbial glass ceiling when she became Assocham?s senior vice president in 2009, the first woman to be elected in 87 years of it?s history.
Ask her if it?s easier or more difficult when you are a woman in the corporate world and she sips her mushroom soup and says matter of factly, ?It?s easier I think simply because I think women bring in so much more into everything they do. We have a different way of looking at things. She brings in a much bigger team approach, a more nurturing and long-term approach.?
And though it?s her work that keeps her going, Swati finds time for other things she loves. Be it cooking, writing (she has written two books), or restoring old things or collecting old books (she has some which are about 300-400 years old).
She loves to combine her language from one field and using it in the other. It?s a little surprise that she used a song written by Rabindra Nath Tagore to weave a dance opera on stories of ancient Indian sciences performed by Mrinalini and Mallika Sarabhai during the inaugural session of Piramal Research Centre. Since the song was really old, it wasn?t easy to find the lyrics and tone. So she went to Kolkata to find it. When she found it on vinyl record, she had to find a recorder to play it, which she finally did in Chor Bazaar and then convinced Pandit Jasraj to sing it.
?You?ve got to be a little mad you see,? she signs off with a twinkle in her eyes.