Biocon Chairperson Kiran Mazumdar Success Story

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is an Indian self-made female billionaire entrepreneur and celebrated businesswoman. She is one of the richest women in India and is the chairperson of Biocon Limited based in Bangalore India. Biocon is a leading company in making breakthroughs in clinical research.

She is also the former chairperson of the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore. As of January 2020, Kiran Mazumdar’s Net worth is $1.3 billion.

In 2019, she was listed as #65 on Forbes list of Powerful Women in the world. She is also the board member of the governors of the Indian School of Business. She is also a former member of the board of governors of the Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad.

Furthermore, Kiran is the term member on the board of MIT, USA till 2023. She also serves as an independent director on the board of Infosys and is also a member of the General Body of Maharashtra State Innovation Society.

Talking about women empowerment, she is the first woman to head the board of governors of the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore.

Kiran Mazumdar Early Years

Kiran Mazumdar was born in Pune, Maharashtra in a Gujarati family. She was educated at Bangalore’s Bishop Cotton Girls’ High School and attended the Mount Carmel College in Bangalore for higher education. She studied biology and zoology and graduated in 1973 with a degree in zoology from Bangalore University. She hoped to attend medical school, but couldn’t because of a scholarship.

Kiran’s fascination with the research started in her early life. Her father was the head brewmaster at United Breweries. He believed in women empowerment and therefore, suggested that she study fermentation science and become a brewmaster. Upon her father’s encouragement, Mazumdar attended Melbourne University in Australia and studied malting and brewing. Eventually, she topped the class and was the only woman in the course. She earned her degree as a master brewer in 1975.

She went on to get a job as a trainee brewer in Carlton and United Breweries. She also worked as a trainee master at Barret Brothers and Burston, Australia. She further developed her skills and worked as a trainee consultant at Jupiter Breweries Limited in Kolkata and also worked as a technical manager at the Standard Maltings Corporation in Baroda.

She wished to advance her career in Bangalore or Delhi, but faced criticism for being a female in the particular field. Not letting discouragement take over, she began to look for other opportunities outside India and was soon offered a position in Scotland.

Kiran Mazumdar’s Pathway to Success

She came across another entrepreneur from Ireland, Leslie Auchincloss, who was looking for an Indian entrepreneur to establish an Indian subsidiary. He was the founder of Biocon Biochemicals. Ltd. A company that produced enzymes for use in brewing, textile and food packaging.

Kiran found herself leaning toward the opportunity on the condition that she would be given a position that would be comparable to the one she was giving up. She often calls herself an accidental entrepreneur because it was an accidental encounter with another entrepreneur.

Together they launched into the business of making enzymes. In an interview, Mazumdar said that if you think about brewing, it is biotechnology. She said that whether she fermented beer or enzymes, the base technology was the same.

She returned to India and started Biocon in a garage of her rented house in Bengaluru with a Capital of Rs. 10,000. At that time, the Indian laws restricted foreign ownership in a company to 30%, which gave 70% to Mazumdar. She eventually moved the business into Manufacturing medicines. The enzyme sales were bringing in cash when allowed funding the research and production of pharmaceutical drugs.

She once said that at that time, there was no venture funding in India, which forced her to create a business model based on revenues and profits. With the prejudice against her gender and many challenges with the business model, she did face some hard times with meeting her financial needs. She also faced difficulty in getting a loan from a Bank.

Finally, a meeting with a banker at a social event helped her to get her first financial backup. Her first employee was a retired garage mechanic and her first factory was nearby a 3000-square foot shed. However, success came her way within a year with Biocon India becoming the first Indian company to be able to manufacture enzymes and export them to the U.S. and Europe.

By the end of her first year, she used her Earnings to buy a 20-acre property to expand her business. She headed the evolution of Biocon from being an industrial enzyme manufacturing company to a completely integrated biopharmaceutical company with a research focus on diabetes, oncology and auto-immune diseases.

Soon, she established two subsidiaries called Syngene in 1994 and Clinigene in 2000. Syngene provides early research and development support services on a contract Basis and Clinigene focuses on clinical research trials and development of both generic and new medicines. Clinigene later merged with Syngene. It was listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in 2015. The current Market cap of the combination is Rs. 14.170 crores.

In 1997, Kiran’s fiancé, John Shaw, personally raised $2 million to purchase Biocon’s outstanding shares from the Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) after Biocon was sold to them by Unilever in 1997. The couple married in 1998. Shaw left his post as chairman at Madura Coats and joined Biocon in 2001 becoming the firm’s first vice-chairman.

In 2004, Narayan Murthy advised Kiran to list Biocon in the stock market. Her intention remained to raise capital to develop Biocon’s research programmes. Biocon became the first biotech company in India to issue an IPO, which was oversubscribed 33 times. It’s the first day closed with a market value of $1.1 billion and it became India’s second company to cross the $1 billion mark on the first day of being listed in the stock market.

Conclusion

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is an amazing woman who has proved to the world that women can excel in any field. Society needs to accept women for their potential and talent.