Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw
Kiran Mazumdar-Shawis an Indian entrepreneur. She is the chairman and managing director of Biocon Limited, a biotechnology company based in Bangalore, India and the current chairperson of IIM-Bangalore. In 2014, she was awarded the Othmer Gold Medal, for outstanding contributions to the progress of science and chemistry. She is on the Financial Times’ top 50 women in business list. As of 2015, she was listed as the 85th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.At present in 2016, she...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionBusinesswoman
Date of Birth23 March 1953
CountryIndia
My legacy is going to be in affordable health care. I am willing to invest in developing that model and the policies around it.
My father was a brew master. He was the one who I was very close to, he influenced me in many many ways including my pursuing a career as a brew master.
What really got me focused on cancer was when my best friend was diagnosed with breast cancer, and even though she was a well-to-do person, I found that her treatment costs were crippling.
Unfortunately, our stock is somehow not well understood by the markets. The market compares us with generic companies. We need to look at Biocon as a bellwether stock. A stock that is differentiated, a stock that is focused on R&D, and a very, very strong balance sheet with huge value drivers at the end of it.
The brewing industry is a very, very male dominated industry. It's a male bastion.
I faced a number of challenges whilst I built Biocon. Initially, I had credibility challenges where I couldn't get banks to fund me; I couldn't recruit people to work for a woman boss. Even in the businesses where I had to procure raw materials, they didn't want to deal with women.
I have never let gender get in my way.
One of my objectives when I started Biocon was to make sure that I create a company for women scientists to pursue a vocation.
I have a great team who has helped me build Biocon, I was very fortunate to be able to share my vision with a group of people who really were as excited about challenges as I was.
I hate the title of being called 'the richest woman in India,' but it's the recognition that this was the value that I had created as a woman entrepreneur, and that makes me very, very proud.
An entrepreneur's life is always a continuous journey.
As you become more successful, the gender barrier disappears. The credibility challenges you have during your growing up years starts disappearing when you start demonstrating success.
I really believe that entrepreneurship is about being able to face failure, manage failure and succeed after failing.
I want to be remembered as someone who put India on the scientific map of the world in terms of large innovation. I want to be remembered for making a difference to global healthcare. And I want to be remembered as someone who did make a difference to social economic development in India.