Grit Is Her Secret Formula

Overcoming Years Of Criticism And Gender Bias, Mazumdar-shaw Has Proven Naysayers Wrong By Positioning Biocon As An Indian Pioneer In The Lucrative Biologic Drugs Market.

- Aveek Datta

SHE MIGHT BE THE richest self-made businesswoman in India, but Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw calls herself an “accidental entrepreneur”. As she recounts how she became one, the 65-year-old chairperson and managing director of biopharmaceutical company Biocon says in characteristic plain-speak that it was the product of “gender bias”. “I call myself an accidental entrepreneur because I never intended to start a business,” she says.

Despite the accidental start, over the nearly four decades she’s been in the business, Mazumdar-Shaw has put the Indian biotechnology sector squarely on the global map. The Bengaluru-based businesswoman founded Biocon in 1978 and since then has turned the company from just a manufacturer of enzymes to India’s largest manufacturer of biopharmaceuticals targeting diseases ranging from diabetes to cancer. And that’s why she’s consistently featured in Fortune India’s Most Powerful Women in business list and ranks No. 2 in 2018.

But to get back to the beginning, after returning to India with a Master Brewer certification from Australia (she wanted to follow in her father R.I. Mazumdar’s footsteps), Mazumdar-Shaw hoped to land a job as a brewer. She was in for a rude shock when she found that most brewing companies were “condescending” towards women. Given that brewmasters work odd hours and handle blue-collar workers, most companies believed it wasn’t a job cut out for a woman.