Ray Of Success - Femina

The heavyweight jury that met to pick the winners of the Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence this year spent the least time on choosing the Businesswoman of the Year and were almost unanimous in their choice: Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, the chairman and managing director of India's best known biotech enterprise, Biocon.

Kiran today, is weighed down under numerous titles - the richest woman in the country (Rs 2,000 crore plus), India's biotech queen, the pioneer of biotechnology in the country, art collector, social diva, the hostess with the mostest in Bangalore and such else.

Underneath all this lies nearly three decades of hard work and toil, almost all of it in total anonymity and tough economic circumstances. Her story is not built on inherited wealth, or on treading the commonly paved path. While hers is not exactly a rags-to-riches story - her father was the chief brew master at United Breweries and the group's current chairman Vijay Mallya is her childhood buddy - she did start life as an entrepreneur in a rented garage.

And the woman who is today, a stellar example of an entrepreneur did not exactly start out wanting to do her own thing. Like a good daughter, she wanted to follow in her father's footsteps. After graduating in zoology from Bangalore University, she went off to Australia and came back with a master brewer's degree in 1975. And what did she find? That the industry wasn't yet ready for a female brew master!

Lack of openings in the industry coupled with a chance meeting with Leslie Auchinloss, who owned a small biotech enterprise in Ireland, set her on the course to building what is today India's leading bio-pharmaceutical enterprise with revenues of Rs 500 crore last year and on target to double it in the next two years. From making enzymes to making drugs to control cholesterol and diabetes, it has indeed been a long and eventful journey for Kiran.

An Award Well Deserved

The Economic Times' Businesswoman of the Year Award is given to a person who "is global in nature and would have shareholders' good uppermost in mind. The person should have followed her heart and vision relentlessly, broken all glass ceilings and pioneered the cause of women in business."Kiran fits all these criteria to the T. Biocon looks at the world as its market and benchmarks itself against the best in the world. Her shareholders have been handsomely rewarded. The people who had invested in Biocon in its initial years have all become hugely rich when the company went public earlier this year. The stock, which was offered at Rs 315, touched a peak of Rs 780 a few months ago and in early November, was trading at Rs 530 levels. Biocon's stock option programme has made her senior management 'karodpatis', with the bulk of the employees also reaping the benefits of listing by becoming 'lakhpatis'.

In building Biocon, Kiran has followed her heart and gone down a path few women have. She says she has no single vision. Visions have to be dynamic and change with the evolving market. Needless to say, as far as she is concerned, there have never been any glass ceilings. And today, she is the role model for just about every young woman in the country who aspires for a professional career.

Still Her Own Woman

Married to John Shaw - she first met him when he was posted in Bangalore as the managing director of Coats Viyella - who is the vice chairman of Biocon, she is rather dismissive of her newfound status as the wealthiest woman in the country.In early November, her 40 per cent stake in Biocon was worth over Rs 2,100 crore. "I am the same person," is her constant refrain.

Success, of course, comes at a price. She is unable to spend as much time with her friends as she used to. Friends, who have been there for her from the days when she was struggling to build Biocon. Today, as she tries to steer the destiny of the country's most high-profile biotech enterprise and lead the cause of biotech in the country as a whole, she still tries to find time to be with her buddies at least once a week in the lovely, new Spanish hacienda-style house she has built with John opposite the Biocon campus.