The vision of Life Science Leader is to be an essential business tool for life science executives. Our content is designed to not only inform readers of best practices, but motivate them to implement those best practices in their own businesses.
Issue link: https://lifescienceleadermag.epubxp.com/i/146836
Executive Q&A; Pushing India's Biotechnology Industry To New Heights By Cliff Mintz, Ph.D., contributing editor B iotechnology is one of the newest entrants to India's life sciences sector and is expected to drive future growth of its burgeoning pharmaceutical industry. The company largely responsible for jumpstarting India's biotechnology is Biocon Limited, a 35-year-old company founded and operated by Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. Mazumdar-Shaw is one of India's most influential women. Biocon currently employs 7,000 people and is one of the world's top 20 biotechnology companies. Under Mazumdar-Shaw's stewardship, Biocon evolved from its humble beginnings in 1978 as an industrial enzyme manufacturing company into one of the most recognized biotechnology companies in Asia. During her tenure at Biocon, she created two subsidiaries: Syngene (1994), that supplies contract development support services for discovery research, and Clinigene (2000), that caters to companies interested in clinical drug development. To date, she is one of the only women in the world to control and lead a publicly traded biotechnology company. Named among Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world, Mazumdar-Shaw is frequently credited with launching India's emerging biotechnology industry. Despite her hectic schedule, she sat down with me during a recent visit to New York City to discuss Biocon, the challenges of doing business in India, and 36 LifeScienceLeader.com the emergence of India as a contender on the world's life sciences stage. Q: How did you manage to build Biocon into one of Asia's leading biotechnology companies? Mazumdar-Shaw: As you may imagine, India was a very different country in 1978 as compared with today. At that time, India was underdeveloped, financially challenged, and overly bureaucratic. And starting a business (especially a joint venture with a foreign company) was extremely difficult because India was going through a nationalistic phase. At age 25, I started Biocon India with roughly $1,000 (10,000 rupees) I had earned and saved. I retained 70 percent ownership of the company because foreigners, according to Indian regulations at the time, could only own up to 30 percent of a joint venture. Not surprisingly, in the late 1970s, there was no venture funding in India, and new businesses depended upon high interest debt funding to start up operations. After talking with countless numbers August 2013 Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairman & managing director, Biocon of Indian bankers — most did not want to give money to a young woman with no business experience in an industry they had never heard of — I was able to convince one to give me a small line of credit to start up operations. I rented space in an industrial part of Bangalore and used my garage as an office to conduct business. Biocon India's plan was to produce industrial-scale enzymes for beer, wine, paper, animal feeds, and detergents, and by the late 1980s we were profitable. In 1989, Unilever bought out the 30 percent stake in Biocon India that was owned by my Irish partners. This was a very transformative period for Biocon because Unilever's multinational business model forced me to conform to global best practices, which, to this day, continue to differentiate Biocon from most other Indian life sciences companies. It is our commitment to global best practices that enables us to maintain our status as a world-class biotechnology company.