THE SHANGHVI FORMULA

POWERED BY ITS PROMOTER'S RENEWED FOCUS ON THE GLOBAL SPECIALTY DRUGS BUSINESS AND BEEFED UP BY A SPATE OF ACQUISITIONS, SUN PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRIES LTD HAS REGAINED ITS SHINE, EVEN AS DEEP CHALLENGES LOOM

- NEETU CHANDRA SHARMA

HERE'S A SKETCH OF A SIMPLE MAN'S PROFILE. SON OF A SMALL BUSINESSMAN IN KOLKATA. BROUGHT UP OBSERVING HIS FATHER OPERATING IN THE DUSTY, CROWDED WHOLESALE MARKET OF DAWA BAZAR.

HIS FATHER RAN a small, wholesale medicine shop, where our protagonist, as a child, would read the drug labels and wonder how they were made. What path would such a profile take in life? For any ordinary man, it would mean continuing to run the father's wholesale medicine shop, and living a contented, financially stable yet unremarkable life. But Dilip Shanghvi, 67, is no ordinary man. The child poring through medicine labels decided one fine day to make medicines himself, and became successful, way beyond probably what he himself would have imagined. Sometime in March 2015, Shanghvi, the Founder and Managing Director of India's biggest pharma company, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Limited, became India's richest man for a brief period, besting Reliance Industries' promoter Mukesh Ambani. He stayed at No. 2 for fairly long, and even today is among the country's 10 richest men.

It is not an appellation he likes to flaunt on his shirt. In fact, quite the opposite. He is distinctly uncomfortable with any reference to his riches, remains intensely work-focussed and introverted, shuns public appearances including press conferences and parties, has a hard time smiling for the cameras, and has a mundane office in a non-fancy location in Mumbai's Goregaon. If his stature has taken anything away, an anecdote from his biography, The Reluctant Billionaire, narrates how his fame ensures he's no longer able to visit a small south Indian restaurant to partake his favourite idli; his friends now deliver the dish to him at home.

And what does such a man do when faced with circumstances that threaten the growth of the business he so fastidiously built? He fights. In his own, low-profile, yet stubborn and determined fashion.