Mrs. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw - Biocon Ltd.

Navaratri is a widely celebrated Indian festival that spans over nine nights and is observed in the honour of mother goddess Durga. During this auspicious festival of Navaratri, we are going to cherish 9 representations of mother goddess Durga whom we will call “Women Navaratna’s” in the Indian corporate sector. The first ratna of our series is Mrs. Kiran Mazumdar.

Mrs. Mazumdar 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 Ltd. based in Bangalore, India. Biocon is a leading company in making breakthroughs in clinical research.

In 2019, she was listed as #65 on the Forbes list of Powerful Women in the world. 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 studied biology and zoology and graduated in 1973 with a degree in zoology from Bangalore University. Her father was the head brewmaster at United Breweries. Upon her father’s encouragement, she enrolled for M.S. in brewing at Ballarat College, Australia. She was the only woman in that course. Eventually, she topped the class and earned her degree as a master brewer in 1975.

She worked as a trainee brewer in Carlton & United Breweries and as a trainee master at Barret Brothers and Burston, Australia. She also worked for some time as a technical consultant at Jupiter Breweries Limited, Calcutta and as a technical manager at Standard Maltings Corporation, Baroda between 1975 and 1977. However, when she enquired the possibility of advancing her career in Bangalore or Delhi, she was told that she could not be hired as a master brewer in India because "It's a man's work.” Thus, she began to look abroad for opportunities and was offered a position in Scotland.

During this period she was approached by Leslie Auchincloss, the founder of Biocon Biochemicals, Ireland who was trying to break into India. At that time foreign ownership was restricted to 30% so Leslie was looking for a partner to help establish an Indian subsidiary. He got more than what he asked for in a focused and forceful personality like Kiran.

Biocon India started in the garage of Mrs. Kiran’s rented house in Bangalore with a Capital of Rs. 10,000 and a plan to produce enzymes.

Initially, she faced credibility challenges because of her youth, gender, and untested business model. She was unable to secure funding for her company at the early stages of her business. She also found it difficult to recruit people to work for her start-up, in fact, her first employee was a retired garage mechanic.

The 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. After India relaxed its foreign ownership rules, Unilever tried to buy Mazumdar-Shaw's stake in the company but failed.

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. In 2004 Biocon became the first biotech company in India to issue an IPO. The IPO was oversubscribed 33 times.

Meanwhile, Mazumdar-Shaw became the recipient of numerous awards. In 2005 Mazumdar-Shaw also received the Padma Bhushan award, one of India’s highest civilian honours, for her pioneering work in industrial biotechnology.

This was the story of our first ratna from the Navaratri special series “Women Navratna’s” - Mrs. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw which is worth noting & is very inspiring to every woman striving to break the stereotypes.