New Media, Marketing and Entrepreneurship

So, we have Ms. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw post lunch at The Leaders In India 2009. I have always admired Kiran as a woman entrepreneur. She has proven words with actions! My respects Mam

Talkign about the Global Biotech sector Kiran says that it is a business size of over 90 billion dollars globally. Each of the past decades have triggered a new growth of innovation. Interesting to know how the entire Biotech industry has evolved over time. Though Ihave not really understood the Biotech industry much, but sure, I am intrigued!

My own journey of Biocon has been that of experimenting and learning! I call myself an accidental entrepreneur!

I was always interested in brewing. I have had to overcome countless challenges over decades. We started small with simple technologies we built and also partnering has helped me build my own entrepreneurial vision. I started my entrepreneurial journey when I had the provilige of starting India’s first Biotech company, which had its own large number of challenges. People were very skeptical of success and at my time, India was still a developing company and we had sub-optimal structure that we have today and it was the time of the license raj than today. I was a 25 yearold first generation woman entrepreneur!

All I had was foolish courage!

There was no access to VC all I could avail of was very expensive debt based funding which I accepted. I was very driven by green technology at that time. But there were very few takers at that time and one of the BIG challenges I had was, the space I was getting into, was based on one very important need, which is: high quality uniterrupted power supply which India does not have even today.

I started my business from scratch opting for less evolved technology. We focused on a niche opportunity, as I had to be very real about the infrastructure and the environment I was working in. I always knew that India was a very small market for me and hence I had to operate in a niche which gave me some kind of advantage. Also in my starting years, what helped me was, I started this as a JV with a small Irish partner, and they provided me with assistance to market, my product to Global markets and this is what helped my business started.

Up until 1980′s we were still loners in Biotech in India

It was really abotu building this company step by painful step and slowly the Biotech sector started gaining acceptance in India when the govt realized the importance. Creating the skill based that we need to drive this industry has paid us fairly well in time. Thankfully because of the success of the IT and software sector, the VC had taken root in India. Since this happened, we started looking towards VC funding, when we tried to scale up. It also allowed to develop sophisticated products and I was able to compete due to our cost base.

By late 1990′s I had a fermentation unit which could handle all sorts of enzymes

The cluster effect that had started in Bangalore really helped us. the boom in Bangalore had many innovative start-ups in the space which also helped the entire industry as such and hence we were benefited. We had international players coming into India setting up operations which helped gain confidence and many are now building scale into what they were doing. Biocon had started gaining market leadership in the niche segment we were looking at.

As an entrepreneur I felt that enzyme segment was going to be limiting to our growth and we had to take some hard decisions

We hence applied our technology to develop into bio-pharmaceuticals. We were the first to cut across the IP barriers hence defining new opportunities.

“We are the world’s first and only company i manufacturing Insulin and Insulin analogs and I am proud to say that”

Overtime we have become bolder in saying that lets innovate in the Bio-pharmaceuticals now. We can today afford to innovate, we can afford to build programs around new products. Innovation in the field of Bio-tech is something we must surely take very seriously. We tend to opt for low risk services and generic versions of drugs and vaccines.

In India the cost of risk is very affordable and hence we must back innovation

What is happening to companies in the western world, is an opportunity for us. I think India really has a good opportunity to cash on in what is happening in the western world. There is a whole new emerging opportunity in Bio-generics. We will pursue Innovation led mantra to grow and that is really my goal as a company and myself as an entrepreneur! All along e have constantly challeneged ourselves and tracked new technologies.

An important learning that I have learned as an entrepreneur is challenging the status quo and moving ahead

We are trying to develop world’s first Oral insulin and its going to be a game changer for us, if it happens

We have really made a lot of conscious effort in partnering with companies, which has actually helped us leapfrog, and it has been a great business tactic for us. In our journey there is one inflection point, I had a tough and emotional call to make! Enzyme was going no where as we were not really investing enough in it, the reason being we had limited resources. And hence we finally said, we must dis-invest and divested into our competition and they have invested and grown this business fr more than we were doing it at that stage. But we surely benefited out of the IP and knowledge we had built over time. We bought a company in Germanhy which will help us start our operations in Europe.

We have started building global scale in our businesses

Our strategy has been always to develop products, leveraging India’s cost base and using affordability as our competitive edge and we are determined to do it at an affordable rate.

My message to other companies from developing world(s) is, who are stretching hard to fight against odds, we have:

• Dont hesitate to partner when you want to pursue certain business opportunities, it allows you to grow faster
• Its important to start simple and start local, be realistic about matching your skill sets w.r.t technologies you are trying to develop

I started my life as a brewmaster looking to brew beer, your journey can take you anywhere, but your life should be an inspiring hope

It was great to listen to you Ms. Mazumdar Shaw as usual! The fire of entrepreneurship has surely gotten a needed kick from you!

Now we have the session int he Q&A mode!

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Praveen Rajpaul, talks about Innovation and how FICCI is helping organizations to improve their productivity and how innovation is changing the riles of the game.

Innovation distinguishes between a LEADER and a follower says Mr. Rajpaul

What do you need for innovation? Its an Idea!

1. Incremental
2. Revolutionary
3. Disruptive
4. Game changer

Unless we have all these sorts if ideas, we wont’ further. But how do you generate such ideas? Is there a process? Can we make it simple? How can we simplify the process of generating the ideas? Puts forth Mr. Rajpaul to the gathering!

Golden Principles of Innovation:

1. COMBINE
   1. products
   2. proceesses
   3. technologies
   4. disciplines
   5. capabilities
   6. arts and science
2. REVERSE
   1. conventions
   2. business models
   3. products
   4. processes
   5. Orthodoxing
3. ELIMINATE
4. ADJUST
   1. Cost
   2. Time
   3. Space
5. DIVIDE
   1. Handling
   2. Transportation
   3. Space
6. SUBSTITUTE
   1. Greener
   2. Lighter
   3. Faster
   4. Better
   5. Stronger
   6. Smarter
7. UTILIZE
   1. Talent
   2. Brand
   3. Networks
   4. Waste
   5. Harmful effects
8. MODIFY
   1. Designs
   2. Eco friendly
   3. Energy efficient
9. UNLOCK CREATIVITY
   1. Passion

Well, there have been some real fantastic principles, that we have seen over time and some real fantastic concepts, which may be workable and may be just vague at the same time. But good to see innovatoin in my lifetime!

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So here I am Live blogging the Day two of Leaders In India 2009, with the first keynote being delivered by Mr. Adi Godrej.

I am sure this is going to be a great learning session with immense value for all present.

Our group has a fairly long history, we are 112 years old, Our sales turnover is a little over a 100 billion rupees

Interestingly Adi is sharing keen information about the Godrej business and they have grown till date. In 1991 we clearly felt that we had to give a boost to our competitiveness. We partnered global companies in our existing businesses, which were GE and P&G as Joint Ventures, though they dont’ continue today.

We learnt a lot from these great International organizations, which we have implemented over the years and they have learnt a lot about India, from us

Each of our companies and businesses, has a non family managing director or president who runs the company, I am surely interested in learning this.  We have a rather strict rule which has that only professionally qualified family members can join the business.

I am the third generation in the business and the fourth has already been inducted into the business

One of the major values we believe in is, that people are our strongest assets. We go out of our way to LIVE the value that people are our strongest assets. We have a constitution of a young executive board, one’s with great future potential and their job is to look at strategy, corporate governance, HRD etc, and then advice the Group CEO’s. Hence we get a tremendous bottom up response. I am very intrigued with the learning from Mr. Godrej.

Being a family business, as a professional and entrepreneur, I am so glad to hear and learn about the functioning of the Godrej group and how it is constituted at various levels. Very interestingly the structure provides the company a very strong bottom up feedback in runnign the company and in my view provides them with a great leadership development tool, creating a very scalable structure.

We have very emphatic programs on diversity within the group

Whenever we have emphasized diversity, the talent we get is much better than the average, Eg: if you go out of the way to recruit strong women, you get great talent, in cases much better than men. We have a very strong E-MBA program within the group. People who have not yet done a management degree, are eligible and promoted to do so. We insist on a 5 day learning schedule.

I myself make sure that I at least spend 30 days a year for learning

We follow a process of forced ranking in our group, we force ranks into non-performers and extra-ordinary achievers. The bottom non-performers which we get everytime in ranking, as it is relative. What this process doe sin a country like India is to strongly improve the working of the team, as everybody does good to work to be in the top 20 per cent.

I get evaluated by my sub-ordinates on a 360 degree basis regularly, and this is only a self evaluation tool

We re-assess our portfolio on a very regular basis and in the last years we have had several strategic acquisitions. We hired a British branding partner called Interbrand to re-launch our brand and it helped us great way in re-positioning our brand and leverage the brand asset value and equity towards achieving growth!

Interestingly we have Mr. Godrej talking about the various succession plans in the company.  Talking about succession planning, Mr. Godrej talks about what if you tomorrow come down a bus, well, we are planned for it, and I remember having the similar conversation with a friend, while running an Incubation Consulting company.

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The Leaders In India – Business Forum 2009 one of the biggest extravaganzas in the history of India Inc. happening for the first time in India. October 8th-10th in Mumbai. This is an exclusive sneek peek into what you can expect at the event and with who all would you be sharing the space at LII!

The Leaders In India – Business Forum 2009, is the inaugural Indian chapter of the world’s largest series of business leadership events to which thousands of CXOs make an annual pilgrimage. With recent speakers including Sir Richard Branson, Kofi Annan, Al Gore, Philip Kotler, Edward De Bono and Ricardo Semler speaking in cities including London & Dubai, “Leaders” command audiences of 1000s of CXO’s every year and has built an indisputable track record of providing the most meaningful, timely and balanced information.

With whom shall you be sharing space at the Leaders In India?

Leaders in India Business Forum brings the ideas, thoughts and inspirations of many iconic international business leaders of the 21st century, and infuses them with India’s best and brightest. Discussions will range from MandA to HR and attractive investment destinations to corporate governance.

With a great speaker and delegate lineup, the event surely is one of the biggest extravaganza’s in India Inc’s history. The participant list boasts of the best of the breed achievers who have created opportunities which have defined our times.

An exclusive sneek peek into the event

The Indo International Business Achievement Awards

The Biggest Awards Ceremony, Celebrating exceptional entrepreneurial and innovative talent, effective and responsible leadership and management, and the setting of new standards within Indian and global business.

Be there to hear from the horse’s mouth and be inspired

Early Bird Offer for the first few

REGISTER for LII Now to avail the Early Bird

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