Quest For The Magic Pill

The Patels of Cadila are betting big in the highrisk, high-return arena of new drug discovery, but they are hedging it with a presence across the pharma value chain

- Naini Thaker

The late Ramanbhai Patel knew a thing or two about buzzwords that are now must-haves in every startup founder’s lexicon: Innovation and disruption. At a time when nobody called a mint-new business a startup and disruption mostly indicated a disturbance, Ramanbhai set up Cadila Laboratories with friend Indravadan Modi. The year was 1952, Patel was in his 20s, and had just chucked his job as a professor at the LM College of Pharmacy in Ahmedabad.

Cadila today has Ramanbhai’s son Pankaj as chairman and grandson Sharvil as managing director (the patriarch passed away in 2001). Cadila Laboratories—the entity that was once set up by Patel and Modi—was restructured. This led to the formation of Cadila Pharma and Cadila Healthcare; the former was taken over by the Modis and latter, under the aegis of the Zydus group, came to the Patels.

Sharvil, the 40-year-old third-gen scion, points out that his grandfather’s aim was to make drugs locally, thereby improving access and affordability. And that called for innovation. At a time when people in India were dying of pernicious anemia, Ramanbhai identified the unmet need and, after research and development, launched Livirubra.

“Ultimately the pharmaceutical business is a business of science. And without innovation, no [pharma] business can survive,” says Pankaj, now 66. Adds Sharvil, “Research was in his [Ramanbhai’s] heart. And that has consciously or subconsciously always influenced me.”