Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw on R&D and Innovation

Biocon's path from enzymes to therapeutics is summarized in the biography as 'exponential'. From its garage origin the enzyme business scaled to a multinational biopharmaceutical enterprise that delivers world-class therapeutics globally, is India's largest insulin producer, and has pioneered the world's only Pichia-based recombinant human insulin — now available in over 40 countries. Mazumdar-Shaw is chairman and managing director throughout.

Mazumdar-Shaw is credited with making 'affordable innovation' the foundation of her business model — a phrase the Institute uses to summarize her commercial philosophy. Recognition includes EY World Entrepreneur of the Year 2020, Forbes' 100 Most Powerful Women in 2010, and Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Her vision and work, the Institute notes, drew global recognition for both Indian industry and for Biocon specifically.

International recognition listed by the Institute includes the Nikkei Asia Prize for Regional Growth, the Express Pharmaceutical Leadership Summit Award for Dynamic Entrepreneur, the 2004 Economic Times Businesswoman of the Year award, Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Life Sciences and Healthcare, the World Economic Forum's Technology Pioneer award, and the Indian Chamber of Commerce's Lifetime Achievement Award —.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw was born on 23 March 1953 in Bangalore to Gujarati parents. Her father Rasendra Mazumdar was head brewmaster at United Breweries — an unusual career for a Brahmin family — and steered her toward fermentation science after she failed to win a medical school scholarship.

Biocon India was started in 1978 in the garage of Mazumdar's rented Bangalore home with seed capital of Rs 10,000. Indian FDI rules capped the foreign partner at 30%, leaving 70% in her hands — a constraint that effectively forced her to be the majority Indian entrepreneur rather than a country manager.

Within a year of founding, Biocon India was manufacturing enzymes and exporting them to the United States and Europe — Wikipedia notes it was the first Indian company to do so. Mazumdar used first-year earnings to buy an eight-hectare property for future expansion.

In 1984 Mazumdar built a dedicated R&D team at Biocon focused on novel enzymes and solid substrate fermentation. A pivotal external injection came in 1987, when Narayanan Vaghul of ICICI Ventures backed Biocon with a US$250,000 venture fund that financed a new plant built around a semi-automated tray culture process inspired by Japanese techniques. In 1989 Biocon became the first Indian biotech firm to receive U.S.

After seeking advice from Narayana Murthy of Infosys, Mazumdar-Shaw took Biocon public in 2004 — the first Indian biotechnology company to issue an IPO. The offering was oversubscribed 33 times and closed its first trading day at a market value of $1.11 billion, making Biocon only the second Indian firm to cross the $1-billion mark on Day One. Her stated reason for listing was to fund the research pipeline rather than to cash out.

Mazumdar-Shaw's 'affordable innovation' philosophy is framed by Wikipedia as her driving strategy. When the lovastatin patent expired in 2001, Biocon moved aggressively into statins and expanded to a portfolio of cholesterol-lowering drugs, signing long-term supply contracts to lock in a market base. Statins eventually generated over 50% of company revenue, taking Biocon from Rs 70 crore in 1998 to Rs 500 crore by the 2004 IPO year —.

Wikipedia describes Biocon as Asia's largest insulin producer and credits the company with pioneering a Pichia-derived recombinant human insulin now sold in over 40 countries. Major research areas today include cancer, diabetes and auto-immune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis. Biocon directed roughly 10% of revenue into R&D as of 2014 — a higher proportion than most Indian pharmaceutical peers —.

In 2009 Mazumdar-Shaw established the 1,400-bed Mazumdar-Shaw Medical Foundation cancer care center at Narayana Health City in Bangalore, adding a center for advanced therapeutics with a bone marrow transplant unit in 2011. The initiative was motivated by the cancer deaths of her best friend, husband John Shaw and her mother — a personal stake that turned Biocon's commercial oncology pipeline into a tangible hospital and research footprint.

Early in Biocon's history Mazumdar-Shaw was already showing what WIPO calls her instinct for finding market gaps. She recalls the satisfaction of producing and patenting novel products, such as a new enzyme to clarify tea. Even after Unilever acquired the Irish parent in 1989, enzymes remained core — and WIPO notes that today Biocon supplies around a quarter of the world market in pectinase, the enzyme that breaks down pectin in fruit juice.

The big breakthrough described by WIPO was Biocon's invention, in the 1990s, of a new fermentation technology to replace the conventional tray-based culture of microorganisms. Trademarked as the PlaFractor, it is a bioreactor that enables the cultivation and extraction of microorganisms to occur within a fully enclosed, computer-controlled system.

Mazumdar-Shaw tells WIPO that IP was a factor in Biocon's rise 'right from the start' — initially as a question of freedom to operate in international markets, but after Unilever acquired the company, Biocon entered what she calls a 'highly professional world where the role of IP was very acute'.

Mazumdar-Shaw's view on IP is captured in the quote 'Sharing IP is the way to develop business very fast in today's world'. WIPO Magazine ends by emphasizing her view that India's biotech rise depended as much on collaborative IP arrangements — licensing, partnerships, contract research — as on defensive patenting. This stance put her at odds with parts of India's pharmaceutical old guard that preferred trade-secret over open licensing models.