Professor, Entrepreneur, Leader

- Aveek Datta

I have never looked at numbers. Numbers are just an outcome of the work done,” Desh Bandhu Gupta, the founder chairman of pharmaceutical company Lupin, had told Forbes India in October 2016. The self-made billionaire passed away at the age of 79 in Mumbai on June 26.

The legacy that Gupta, fondly known as DBG, has left behind is the world’s fourth largest generics pharma company by market value and the sixth largest in terms of sales; Lupin earned $2.55 billion (around ₹16,000 crore) in revenue in FY17.

Gupta was born in Rajgarh, Rajasthan, and was a professor of chemistry at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, when he decided to borrow ₹5,000 from wife Manju and start Lupin in 1968. He went on to become a billionaire (ranked 20, with an estimated net worth of $5.1 billion, on the 2016 Forbes India Rich List).

His philosophy towards business is perhaps best exemplified by the very name of his company: Lupin is a flowering plant that nourishes the soil in which it grows.

Gupta founded Lupin as a manufacturer of vitamins, but the desire to serve a larger social cause saw him start the manufacture of drugs to combat tuberculosis (TB), which has claimed millions of lives in India. This he did despite the low margins in the business, with drug prices being largely controlled by the government.