Kiran Mazumdar Shaw

The skillful fighter puts himself into a position which makes defeat impossible. - Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

Loved reading the story of Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, founder of Biocon, as a shining example of this in The Art of Business Wars, the book written by David Brown, previously famous for his amazing podcast "Business Wars."

Born in 1953 in Pune to Bengali parents, Mazumdar believed anything was possible, thanks to the upbringing by her parents. She went to school in Bangalore, where she says: “My teachers .taught me how to think for myself and to excel in everything I do." Her first interest was medicine, but when she didn’t receive a scholarship, her father suggested she follow in his footsteps and become a brewmaster. Brewing was a male-dominated field at the time, and not just in India. But Mazumdar decided to pursue the field anyway. In a way, the idea of becoming a brewer as a woman was a form of positioning, doing things differently and exploiting an open whitespace.

In 1975, Mazumdar went to Australia to become a master brewer and graduated at the top of her class. Despite this, she found it difficult to secure a trainee job in a male-dominated industry. However, a few months later, she received a call from Leslie Auchincloss, founder of biochemical company Biocon, based in Cork, Ireland. Biocon produced enzymes, proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. He wanted to partner with Mazumdar because he saw enormous untapped potential in India. Initially, Mazumdar hesitated: “I told him, I am the last person he should ask because I had no business experience, and I had no money to invest.” She introduced Auchincloss to a leader in the Indian malting industry. But Auchincloss persisted. “I don’t really want a business partnership with him,” he told her. “I want an entrepreneur and I want you to be that entrepreneur.” Mazumdar learned the ins and outs of Biocon’s business in Cork and then returned to Bangalore with a mission: build a biotech company.

In 1978, twenty-five-year-old Kiran Mazumdar founded Biocon India in the garage of a rented house with ten thousand rupees in seed capital. And, as they say, the rest is history. Only six years into the company, she formed a dedicated R&D team discovering novel enzymes and developing new fermentation techniques, pivoting Biocon India from enzyme manufacturer to full-fledged biopharmaceutical company. “Affordable innovation” became her motto.

In 2004, Mazumdar-Shaw took Biocon public. The Biocon IPO was oversubscribed 33x and was the second Indian company to exceed $1 billion on 1st day of trading. Today, the company holds nearly a thousand patents and directs 10% of revenue to R&D, a substantially higher proportion than any competitor. With a net worth of ~$3.6 billion herself, Mazumdar-Shaw is one of the world's few self-made female billionaires, as well as the first woman to take the Gates Foundation’s “Giving Pledge”: she will give the majority of her wealth to philanthropic causes.“