The Importance of Being Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw ; She's Rich, Socially Aware, the Muse of an Entire Industry and an Emerging Voice of India Inc. So, What Makes Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw Tick?

Business Today › February 27, 2006

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Summary

One day in January, some three months after she changed her company's work timings to 7.30 a.m. to 4 p.m. so that employees could come in to and leave work without spending hours on Bangalore's chaotic roads where the traffic in peak hours can be killing, 52-year-old Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw decided that she had had enough. The state government did not seem bothered by the city's crumbling infrastructure, politicians of various hues were busy taking potshots at N.R. Narayana Murthy, the iconic Chairman of Infosys Technologies, for speaking his mind about just what needed to be done, and things, such as the traffic on Hosur Road that leads up to Electronics City (housing Infosys and several other tech companies), and further down, to Biocon's office, were rapidly spiralling out of control. And so, the Chairman and Managing Director of Biocon went on television and trashed the government. Nothing changed (nothing ever does, a cynic might say), but the incident was another minor milestone in the progression of Mazumdar- Shaw from a mere biotech entrepreneur made immensely rich by an IPO (initial public offering) to one of the few voices of India Inc., and, arguably, its most powerful female one.

If power is measured by its trappings, then Mazumdar-Shaw has it all. Her stake in Biocon is worth Rs 2,059 crore. She is the face of the biotech industry and President of Association of Biotech Led Enterprises (able), an association and industry lobby that promises to do for the biotech industry what NASSCOM, the software industry's equivalent did for it (significantly, Infosys' Murthy was one of the founder members of nasscom and was its Chairman between 1992 and 1994). The Biocon campus has, along with that of Infosys, become a regulation-stop for heads of states and other assorted dignitaries who visit Bangalore. And when the Prime Minister wants to discuss issues related to trade, industry and commerce, Mazumdar-Shaw is among the handful of CEOs he seeks out (others being the likes of Reliance Industries' Mukesh Ambani, HDFC's Deepak Parekh and Infosys' Nandan Nilekani). There aren't too many people in India, men or women, who can claim similar distinctions.