Biocon

“I myself spun off a company from Biocon called Baikara you know, which I took to Boston, and today that's the most, the hottest biotech startup in, in that onco field.”

“So I think there are about a hundred billion dollars of biologic drugs coming off patent in the next 10 years. And this is the opportunity we are addressing.”

“So on the 29th of November last year, we finalized and fructified the deal. It was a three billion dollar acquisition. Two billion in cash and billion in stock in, in, in this company.”

“Therefore, if you look at in, in India, we are the only company that has managed to develop biosimilars for global markets. No other Indian company has been able to take their products to the US. Or Europe.”

“I divested it to my biggest competitor, Novozyns, which was the Danish company I used to compete with worldwide. And they always told me, they said, you know, interestingly, India was the only country where you were number one.”

“In fact, even right now, more than 40% of my researchers are women.”

“When I look at my shop floor, there are only about 10% women on the shop floor. I'm now deliberately trying to force That ratio to increase to at least 30%. And I think it's beginning to happen. And that's because I've put it as a KRA for my leadership team sa…”

“So today, I think I will give myself another 10 years of active engagement, so to speak, where I can't possibly say, oh, tomorrow I'm going to take a break, or tomorrow I want to do something which today I can't even think of.”

“Biocon owned almost 65% of that company. But when we needed money to pay for a very recent mega acquisition that we did in the US, I actually monetized 10% of that company for over three hundred million dollars, because today, and today's engine is worth about…”

“So in 2004, I launched India's first recombinant human insulin, and I brought the prices crashing down so much so that I forced the innovator brands to also come down to my pricing. And so now of course nobody uses animal insulin. So I was able to bring the pr…”

“Today we are the largest producer of the statin APIs around the world. We have a 50% market share of statin APIs, and if we look at our share in the US market again, a 40% market share in Ottorvastatin and Rosuvastatin in the US.”

“You should be agnostic To what a technology is producing, but to see whether the technology can do something else. And so even though I had developed enzyme technologies based on biotechnology, you have to be agnostic to what those platform technologies can do…”

“Unilever at that time owned 30% of Biocon. Okay. Now all that we paid Unilever was two million dollars for that 30%.”

“The Biocon group, if I count now, I think I've created a hundred entrepreneurs from our organization.”

“Of course, a few years later, I was very lucky that I was able to get the brightest minds to join me, and I therefore consider myself really the first startup in the country.”

“So my first two employees were retired tractor mechanics who needed a job desperately.”

“And I would say, because actually it's not two X, you're actually spending much less than even the chemical technology, because you actually need to process the effluent you are You know, throwing out because of the chemical process. Right now, you don't do ef…”

“Today, chemicals pollute, but if you use biotransformation or biocatalysis, you can replace those chemical processes with enzyme technologies, which are very, very eco-friendly and non-polluting and biodegradable.”

“Why don't you really look at this joint venture and start, and if you don't like it after a year, ok, I will promise you to find you a job. Ok, so with that kind of assurance, I thought, I have nothing to lose.”