BioSpectrum
Myth
Breaker Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and the
Story of Indian Biotech By Seema Singh
Collins
Business/Rs 599/324 pages
This
well-written biography with its catchy title, gives readers a cogent answer to
the question, who is Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, as well as its corollary, what is Biocon all
about. Actually, it leans more towards tracking of the business rather than delving
too deeply into the personality traits of its founder but then, the best
business biographies do just that.
So, who is Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw? Myth-breaker. Risk-taker. A
woman who was not an engineer and who did not come from a business family, yet started and steadily grew a ground-breaking
business. Initially setting out to be a
professional brewmaster, Mazumdar-Shaw faced so much hostility and gender bias
that she turned to Plan B: to start a biotech
start-up instead, where she could leverage
her fermentation knowledge to produce enzymes and biopharmaceuticals instead of
beer. Mazumdar-Shaw`s father
Rasendra Mazumdar was India`s first brewmaster and that definitely helped shape
her initial interests in brewing. Her mother helped, too; in the early years, when
Mazumdar-Shaw was going to coastal towns securing fish maw supplies, in Delhi,
her mother Yamini Mazumdar, would head to the fish market near the Jama Masjid once
every ten days and buy a few hundred kilos of the fish maws, then ship the
stock to her daughter in Bangalore.
Her mentor and
one-time partner in business, Leslie Auchincloss,
describes Mazumdar-Shaw thusly, after
his first meeting with her: a fantastic, enthusiastic, ass-kicking woman who is
aggressive, demanding and would make a great partner for Biocon Ireland.
Pioneer? That`s a
given. Pugnacious? Yes, if the situation
calls for it. Ready to ward off
challenges that comes in the form of dirty deeds done by corporate rivals, like
the filing of PILs. Ready to take on the Chinese goods wall. Once this
businesswoman bought into some idea, concept or project, she moved forward with
lightning speed; witness the setting up
of the Mazumdar-Shaw Cancer Centre, together with the renowned cardiologist Dr Devi
Shetty. And in John Shaw, she has a spouse and staunch supporter who is more
than willing to stay in the shadows and let all the limelight fall on Kiran. As
a finance person, he had some pithy advice to give his wife: be adventurous in
your science but be very conservative in your finance. That advice has held
good.
So, what exactly is Biocon?
A research company that is running a number of programmes to bring new drugs to
change the course of the disease. Bit by steady bit, the concern has grown incrementally,
added technical and managerial muscle to its manufacturing, started to supply
an iron complex, Serratio, then statins, and then, insulin. Today this
mid-sized company does novel biologics while earning the margins of speciality
generics, even as it harbours ambitions of an innovator company.
Not all roses,
though; here are some interesting facts: Biocon took ten years to become the
largest Indian insulin brand but still has only 6.5 per cent share in the overall
insulin market, and ten per cent in the
represented market. When
Biocon went public in 2004, people were sure it would pave the way for other biotechnology
companies to follow suit. Not a single firm did. It has been a hard climb but if ever anyone was up
to the challenge, it was and continues
to be, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw.
The book is a dispassionate collation of Biocon stories,
and introduces to the reader the whole
team that pulled its considerable weight and helped Mazumdar-Shaw put her
company on the biotech map. Author Seema Singh, former bureau chief of Forbes India and a MacArthur
grant awardee, said the book took two years to write and involved over 200
interviews. It takes the reader through
an interconnected maze involving a feisty woman with a definite vision and the
perseverance to stay the long course.
Verily the face of
the biotech industry in India now, Mazumdar-Shaw is in her early sixties and
still going strong, her business acumen as well as her vision for her
enterprise as sharp and clear as it was 37 years ago. Mazumdar-Shaw is all
set to take Biocon’s biopharma business to the next level, with the focus on
the new field of immuno-oncology. Which is a good thing considering the TINA factor
here. There is no alternative to Mazumdar-Shaw as yet. As GS Krishnan of Novozymes says: ``If today Kiran
chooses to say `enough of industry leadership` and steps back, there is nobody
to talk to the government on behalf of Indian biotech.``