Recently, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, biotechnology pioneer and one of India’s wealthiest women, had a sudden awakening that changed the way she viewed life. “I recently lost my dearest friend to cancer and it made me realise how important it is to show how much you care for your near and dear ones,” she says. “You know, we (in the corporate world) are so obsessed with work and tend to sacrifice our social commitments to our families and friends.”
If Kiran has been recently included in the prestigious ‘Top 50 women in business’ listing by Financial Times, London, she wears that mantle lightly. “Power to me means the ability to influence change,” she states. “I have drawn inspiration from several people at each stage of my life, but it was really my late father RI Mazumdar who made me believe that scientific knowledge is hard currency and that not everyone has this intellectual asset.”
Biotechnology, her vocation, might have happened “in a very accidental manner” as she puts it, after being unaccepted as a brewmaster in India being a woman, but it triggered off the right emotions. “I think it evoked a spirit of challenge with which I pursued. And my father encouraged me; he believed that women who did not utilise their education in a meaningful manner had in essence destroyed valuable intellectual capital for the country.”
Plenty may have changed since the day she started her company Biocon in 1978, but life has held its constants too. “Like I still have a rebellious streak in me,” she smiles. “Today, I have been accepted as one among equals in the business world and I am determined to take on skeptics who believe that India cannot innovate!”
And while she’s busy charting the road ahead with her plan to gift India its first blockbuster drug — oral Insulin, among other things, Kiran has her own equations sorted out. “I believe that a successful woman needs a very supportive husband and family. Whilst it is true that I was single when I built Biocon, the real growth came when I got married. My husband John has played a vital role in our success today; he’s invested in me in every way,” she asserts.
When time permits, Kiran takes off to her favourite spots — Barcelona and the Maldives. “I love the beach and snorkeling; holidays are the only time I force myself to relax and unwind,” she says.
