‘We have started a youth movement’

They admit that their 24-year-old son Anand has “unfinished business” and he has preferred to fly off to Harvard rather than take baby steps into one of world’s largest pharma companies.

“We don’t want to force him to do anything. He wanted to do something for rural India, so he set up an NGO and started working towards providing healthcare to rural Rajasthan. Now, he is going back to study and we are fine with it. My daughter Nandini is already looking after our international business arm, so my son has all the time in the world,” says Dr Swati Piramal.

Looking down from his towering office on the top floor of Piramal Towers at Peninsula Park in Lower Parel, Ajay Piramal reveals that he is more caught up with a top priority project that might change the face of healthcare in India — a sort of miracle cure for cancer.

“Yes, we are developing a drug to cure certain cancers. It is something that the whole family is excited about. It is a very tough project because one in maybe thousand drugs can actually make it to the market. But I am confident that we will be able to develop a drug by 2011,” says Ajay.

Talking about his son, the doting dad says that he has introduced the tradition of weekly religious satsangs at their home. “It’s actually because of him that we got in touch with ISKON and Radhanath Swami who has now become our family guru. I also had deaths in my family (his dad Gopikisan died in 1979 and his brother Ashok died of cancer five years later) and faced lots of tough challenges. But those are nothing compared to what Guruji has gone through,” says Ajay emphatically.

As for what Anand’s parents are up to now — it’s fulfilling the dreams of their son who started an educational youth initiative when he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

“We have started a youth movement called Piramal Gandhi Fellowship where we sponsor 40 students from India’s finest educational institutions like St Stephens, IITs, etc and encourage them to work with the headmasters of schools in rural India. It’s something that is very close to my son’s heart and after Harvard, if he decides to associate himself with these projects, business can wait,” Ajay ends.

Business baroness
Daughter Nandini Piramal is turning out to be one of the most successful businesswomen in the country. The 26-year-old Oxford graduate has been steadily “taking the international operations of the company to new heights” after she joined her dad’s company as executive director this year.