Kiran Mazumdar shaw says “I think it’s very important to keep evolving. And I think, when you have that kind of a mindset, then reinventing yourself or reinventing the business is a natural part of that process. You have to keep challenging the status quo.”
This is the story of Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, a traditional side stepper, a one-time beer brewer, and India’s greatest Healthcare Hope.
Kiran Mazumdar shah grew up, in Bangalore, in south India. She had a very charmed childhood and grew up in a very comfortable. environment. Bangalore was a charming city. It was called the garden city of India. It was a great place to grow up because it was a cosmopolitan city. Bangalore was also known as the Science Capital of India.
Bangalore had the famous Indian Institute of Science and the national aeronautical laboratory. And there was a science museum, which Kiran Mazumdar shah used to frequent quite a lot. So as kids, they grew up, loving science Kiran Mazumdar shah is glad to grow up in Bangalore.
Presenter Mujumdar was the brewer at United Breweries. India’s largest. Her family lived in the brewer staff compound and the Resendiz daily routine was a big part of the family’s life. Kiran and her brothers grew up loving the sights and smell of brewer.
Kiran Mazumdar shaw says “You know, we used to play hide and seek in the, in the cellars. We used to go and accompany my father when he used to do what they call a, take the mash in the mornings at the crack of Dawn, you went into the mash ton, and it had this wonderful aroma of malted barley. And, you know, its fabulous aroma. And then when you went into the were tour what they call the kettle, you could have this hoppy aroma, and they used to boil the word with hops to give it that bitter flavor, and then of course, when you went into the fermentation sellers you could smell the yeast fermenting away.
So, you know, brewing is a very fascinating technology.” my father was a man, way ahead of his times he was a very. Liberated man, if I may say so believed that he must bring up his son and his daughter no differently. And he kept telling me, he said, you know, you must look at life the same way your brothers do. Don’t think that you have to look at it differently just because you’re my daughter or just because you’re a girl and this society has to learn and respect women for what they are and what they can do. And, unfortunately, they don’t. And I think my father was very troubled with that and he wanted his daughter to grow up, not perceiving this difference, my whole attitude to society and life in general, was very different. Thanks to him”.
“My mother was very very supportive of everything my father wanted me to do as she always confessed secretly I wanted you to be a little more traditional but your father wouldn’t let you be that way.
Kiran Mazumdar Shah attended a private high school and later graduated from Bangalore University with a double major in biology and zoology with dreams of becoming a doctor. Her early career hopes were thwarted when she didn’t pass a scholarship test for medical school without a plan B in place, Kirin desperately sought another career up. Exactly when her father suggested she follow his steps and become a brewer.
Kiran Mazumdar shah is kind of taught that quite, all the, she found it discomforting as a girl to settle, to even look at pursuing a career in doing, but Kiran Mazumdar shah’s father said to her, why do you have that kind of a perspective about brewing? Because brewing is the oldest biotechnology known to man. So, Kiran Mazumdar shah thinks she should look at it as a science. Kiran Mazumdar shah thinks to should look at it as a fermentation science.
At 21 years of age, Kiran packed her bags and left home for the first time to attend the brewing program at Balart university in Australia.
Where her father sent many of his young brewers that were quite, a defining time in her life. Kiran Mazumdar Shah would say, she learned to fend for herself, not only as a young woman in an all-male class but also as someone who was pursuing a very, very different vacation, which no woman would think of pursuing. Kiran Mazumdar shah certainly got her spunk from my Australian days. She learned to drink with the boys, and do well in class. She knows she used to talk about her projects all the time, so that gave her a terrific sense of success and achievement and confidence, Kiran Mazumdar shah would say more than anything else. So she came back to the very self-assured.
Despite, her confidence and her certification as a master brewer from Balart. Kiran Mazumdar shaw faces an uphill battle, trying to convince leaders in the brewing industry to take her seriously as a brewer. What they basically said to her
“it’s great to have you a consultant we possibly give you a job managing a laboratory but as a brewer managing our operations no way”.
Kiran Mazumdar shaw says “So that was the first rude shock I got when I came back to India, that was when the penny drops so to speak. And I realized that it wasn’t going to be easy to find a job as a brewer in India. I was trying to do something to change society’s attitude, toward women. I finally gave up because they came to a point in time when I said, okay, I’m going to forget about getting a job in this country. I’m going to try and find a job outside”
Kiran Mazumdar Shaw set her sights on a brewing career in Scotland and planned to move there, to carry on the family business until that is, she had a chance encounter with entrepreneur, Leslie Auchincloss, founder of Irish enzyme maker, Biocon biochemicals. One of the enzymes, he was very keen to manufacture was a plant-based enzyme from papaya. There were several papaya cultivations in India, and he felt that India was the right place to produce this enzyme. So he had visited India just to see whether he could, set up, a small manufacturing operation in India.
Auchincloss was an ambitious businessman. And. A joint venture with his firm to create industrial enzymes for makers of beer, food, and textiles around the world. So, he quickly made Kiran a proposal.
The project involves growing microbes in large vats, under precise temperatures and pressures. A process Kiran Mazumdar shaw was quite familiar with.
Brewing is a very enzymatic process. So from that point of view, Kiran Mazumdar shah kind of almost consoled her that she was still very linked to her original brewing background. Kiran Mazumdar Shah had no role models. She has to be very honest when she was starting on her own, she was doing something quite heart-breaking. Kiran Mazumdar Shah couldn’t look or turn to anybody at that stage. She realized she was doing it alone. She realized she was doing something very different and she just managed to do things with a lot of common sense, a lot of determination, and a lot of foolish courage.
Undaunted by Indian bureaucracy, Kiran Mazumdar shaw secured all the required permits and set up shop in her garage. Biocon India was incorporated in 1978. She had a company name, a mission statement, and an initial investment of 1200doloars what she didn’t have yet were employees.
Kiran Mazumdar shaw says “I was swamped with applications. I had a great time, shortlisting and, calling people for interviews. It’ll cheat a bit because I said, the managing director of a multinational company is looking for secretarial help. No, a multinational company is looking for an accountant. It wasn’t lies, but it was a white lie. I would say they would arrive at my garage, and, be very disappointed. And then they would take one, look at me, and assume I was the secretary. We have an appointment with the managing director and I’d say, yes, that’s me. What can I do for you? Let’s get the interview started and I realized it was a reverse interview. It wasn’t me interviewing them, but it was them interviewing me about job security and how secure they would be working for a woman and working for a company headed by.
Kiran stayed focused on building the company, taking one careful step at a time. She ended up hiring two very brave, sort of about to retire car mechanics. She rented out a small industrial shed. They started developing the process and she started manufacturing the product. Kiran and her two former car mechanic employees began making an enzyme from papaya. This was a plant enzyme called Pepin, which was extracted from the papaya fruit, from the latex. So basically what you did was you based the papaya fruit and latex would flow out and the latex would be collected. And this latex was very, very rich in a proteolytic enzyme, an enzyme that breaks down proteins, and then you would have to collect this latex and purify the enzyme, through a very elaborate process. And then that was the product we would then sell as a food enzyme”
After a successful first year, Kiran Mazumdar shah began to dream about a bigger future for her company, making microbial enzymes in addition to plant enzymes and moving out of the garage.
Kiran Mazumdar shah was brave enough to invest all that she had saved in the first year and buy this property. It was a 20-acre property, so it was a pretty large property. Everyone looked at her and said, what are you doing? Buying such a big piece of land. You’ll hardly use half an acre. Kiran Mazumdar Shah said, yeah, that’s true, but let me figure it out. It’s going so cheap that I should buy it. Let’s hope that, you know, one day I’ll use up all those 20 acres. So let me think ahead and let me have that kind of vision. today. Not only have we used every single bit of., property, but of course, we now spilled it over into a hundred-acre property, which is the second phase. And then we’re putting up another large facility in Malaysia, which occupies another 50 acres. “
Kiran Mazumdar Shah has never been to business school. And attributes a common-sense approach to buying a con success. In 1989, Kiran became the sole owner of the company. She then refocused the business and Biocon expanded from producing enzymes to a trading biosimilar, the biotech equivalent of generic drugs. Today, Biocon occupies a 90-acre campus to accommodate 5,000 employees. It is India’s largest biotech company and Asia’s biggest producer of insulin.
Kiran Mazumdar Shah works a few doors down from her husband, John Shaw, who became Biocon vice chairman in 2001. In addition to generic drugs, Biocon has expanded its product line to develop its pharmaceuticals, a risky and expensive venture. The one with considerable humanitarian and business advantages. Biocon is in trials on a cancer treatment drug and has also invested much into creating a revolutionary class of insulin. One that can be taken orally.
Kiran Mazumdar Shah says “So we decided, Hey, why don’t we try and make a go of this challenge? It’s the holy grail. It’s a huge problem in India. Diabetes is one of the largest disease burdens that we have in India. It’s a huge global challenge. And I said, if we out of India can do something like this, it would, you know, leapfrog us into a different league.”
Kiran has worked hard to attract and retain a large pool of talented scientists and her efforts are helping to make India a leader in biotechnology. Biocon now operates in 75 countries and boasts global sales of 712 million dollars.
When she was growing up, she was very apologetic about India. Kiran Mazumdar Shah remembers that when she started Biocon in 1978, she didn’t even have a telephone. Everything was so primitive. Today’s India is very different. Things have changed drastically. Biocon itself has close to 3000 chemists was into discoveries. The research went into development.
Doing some wonderfully innovative work in, the organization. And for her as a company out of India, Kiran Mazumdar shah would love to see one of their drugs make a huge difference to patients all over the world. Today, most Indians, especially those that live at the fringes of the economy have virtually no access to decent healthcare”.
Her roots and science and our compassion for others have made Kiran a vital force in India. She has spent $15 million to create the 1400 beds at Mazumdar Shaw cancer center in Banglore. She also founded a community-based health operation that serves 50,000 patients within a 10-mile radius from Biocon’s headquarters, Biocon foundation programs donate millions to support health insurance coverage for over 100,000 Indian villagers.
When she was growing up, she wants to be a doctor. And when she couldn’t make it to medical college, she was so dejected. But, interestingly, her life has brought her back to medicine., not as a doctor, but as a researcher and somebody in science. So Kiran Mazumdar shah does now interact very closely with doctors and the medical community, she guesses it’s that kind of a full circle that’s been completed.
Kiran has become a key player in the conversation around national health care. Her foolish courage has brought her far in the world, although she is never far from her brewery roots and the fundamentals of science. Kiran Mazumdar Shah says “India has always respected and focused on chemistry in a big way. Biocon itself has one of the largest populations of chemists in the country. Ultimately it’s all about chemicals and, an atom. And the whole thing finally boils down to chemistry without chemistry and biochemistry. You know, you wouldn’t have life.”