Biocon's Brewmaster

Through her focus on technology, scale and grit, kiran mazumdar-shaw has helped build biocon into a global biopharma force to reckon with.

- Aveek Datta

On September 9, Bengaluru—India’s IT hub—came to a grinding halt due to a general strike called against a Supreme Court directive, asking the Karnataka government to release water from river Cauvery to Tamil Nadu.

One prominent Bengaluru citizen, industrialist Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, decided to raise her voice on Twitter against the demonstrations that were crippling normal life. As is the trend these days, Mazumdar Shaw immediately got trolled by the pro-agitation brigade. Undaunted, she followed this up with an open letter, where she empathised with the farmers who would suffer from the SC verdict, but reiterated that bandhs weren’t the solution.

This isn’t the first time that Mazumdar-Shaw has spoken up on issues of public concern. She has been as much vocal about Bengaluru’s civic infrastructure as she has been with gender biases in corporations. Says TV Mohandas Pai, an old acquaintance and chairman of Manipal Global Education, “She is a strong person who is not afraid to share strong views that are based on fact.”

It is this feistiness with which the 63-year-old chairperson and MD of Biocon has pioneered an enterprise in the field of biopharmaceuticals, emerging, in the process, as India’s richest self-made woman. Pai believes that Mazumdar Shaw is perhaps at “the peak of her career”, and her strong return to the Forbes India Rich List for 2016, after dropping out last year, reflects his confidence.