India's Richest Lady

There must have been a time when Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw was neither wealthy nor famous, but it is difficult now to imagine that period. She has been one of Bangalore’s icons for at least a decade. Kiran was famous in Bangalore well before she was wealthy, and she was wealthy well before she became famous elsewhere. Bangalore had felt her future long before the rest of the country did.
In those days, even a few years ago, you could bump into her at important occasions in the city. She was present during cricket matches, big concerts, conferences, charity runs…
Kiran made news by her sheer presence. You could spot her photograph in the newspapers the next day, cheering the Indian cricket team or attending an Elton John concert. The parties at her Koramangala residence those days were events in themselves. Then she became the wealthiest woman in India.
After Biocon was listed in the stock exchange, Kiran began to slowly move away from the public scene in Bangalore. She began attending fewer public functions. She started throwing fewer parties. Even at Bangalore Bio, an annual biotech conference originally conceived and nurtured by her, Kiran is no longer the presence she once was. She was Bangalore’s most visible corporate figure before Biocon went public, even more visible than Azim Premji or Narayana Murthy. But it seemed that her wealth, even if only in stockmarket terms, drew her away from public life. She became shy.
We are joking of course. This is a true joke. Call it a coincidence, but as her wealth grew, Kiran had less and less time to spend it. This is true of most entrepreneurs, but with Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw this trend took a special significance. She enjoyed running her business, but she enjoyed her public life too. She also enjoyed the fine things in life. Her reputation in Bangalore was not just as an entrepreneur. She is known as an art collector, a socialite, the voice of the biotech industry, civic activist and even an event manager par excellence. Yet she has been dropping all these hats one by one. Why?
As a young woman, Kiran had not dreamt of becoming an entrepreneur. She was persuaded by Leslie Auchincloss, founder of Biocon Biochemicals, Ireland, to start a business in Bangalore in 1978. It was a difficult period financially for her family. “I had no money at that time,” says Kiran, “because my father had lost all his savings in a bad investment.” She hesitated long before taking the plunge, and that too only after Auchincloss assured her security.
Kiran has had an upper-middle class upbringing. Her father was a brew master at the UB Group and was wealthy enough for Kiran to get an all round education. “She had always had strong values,” says Neelima Roshan, her long-time friend. She developed fine tastes too. Kiran knew her Bangalore and people living there well. Her business went through tough times, but she hung on. “Over the years, I have been very impressed with her ability to remain focused,” says R.A. Mashelkar, director general, CSIR. It was well over a decade before Biocon showed signs of becoming a large company.
Focused as she was, Kiran also took a healthy interest in life around her. She organised public marches, worked with the police to create traffic awareness, threw parties, regularly spoke at public forums. She came to be known as an art collector. Kiran was also an equitable employer and looked after her employees well. “Kiran was a pioneer in Bangalore to introduce an egalitarian culture at the workplace,” says Vijay Chandru, CEO, Strand Genomics and a thoroughbred Bangalorean himself. Kiran was developing into a complete all rounder.
In those days, Kiran’s reputation in the city grew faster than her wealth. It was impossible not to notice her if you were in a position of some influence. A company like Biocon would always run into problems — finances, import restrictions, the tax regime, environment regulations — that were not easily solved. Kiran would push hard at the system, refusing to budge till she got what she wanted. It was difficult to wish her away. She was tough even to the point of arrogance, but her arrogance grew from her passion for business rather than a sense of superiority. “She was incredibly persevering,” says Nitin Deshmukh, head of Kotak Mahindra Private Equity.
Her wealth began to grow by the end of the 1980s, and by the early 1990s, she was rich by upper-middle class standards. She built a large house in Koramangala, an upmarket locality in the city. She had had an aristocratic upbringing. Now she could create a matching lifestyle on her own. Her connections grew as her business expanded. Her social circle, already quite wide, expanded further. People noticed her style, her growing wealth, and they began to take her seriously. There was no woman like her in the city. She was becoming a celebrity.
In business, Kiran was known as a careful spender, she spotted opportunities well before others. But she invested carefully, shunning business fashion. Kiran seemed to be less frugal with her private wealth. She lived well, began driving a Mercedes and travelling often in first class. She was seen sporting a Cartier watch. She was holidaying in Maldives. She donated large sums of money to good causes, including Rs 1 crore once to improve Bangalore.
She was the pre-eminent spokesman of the biotechnology industry. Her world was never limited to herself or her company or even her city. “Kiran could always see the larger picture,” says Narayan Vaghul, former chairman, ICICI. She got involved with the conference Bangalore Bio, got other biotech entrepreneurs together to form an association and became a vocal spokesperson of the industry at the Centre. Then came the IPO. Life and business took a sharp turn.

The house in which Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw now lives was built by her husband John Shaw. It is a 17,000-sq. ft, sprawling bungalow designed by architect Sandip Khosla. People tend to associate this house with Kiran’s new-found wealth, but there is no connection. “If I had not married John, I could not have afforded this place,” Kiran had once told us. All his life, Shaw had nurtured dreams of living in such a place. He is the director (international business), Biocon.
Such close associations at home and office make personal and professional boundaries fuzzy. Your office moves into your home, and your home into the office. Shaw is also Kiran’s business partner, confidante, advisor, and even mentor (he brings 30 years of professional experience into his mentoring). Their house is a home, a resort, an office, a getaway, a meeting venue, a place of celebration, all within easy reach of the Biocon corporate office. The opulence of the house, called Glenmore, is striking even after several visits. Even more striking is the contrast between business prudence and personal extravagance. Glenmore is the venue of many parties and celebrations. Those who know her well know that Kiran does not waste money. Virtually all meetings, with one possible exception on New Year’s Eve, have a connection with business. Kiran and Shaw don’t hire a hotel to host a business party. She often brings her corporate guests home, and they inevitably go away impressed. She saves valuable time by not driving into the city. She also saves, paradoxically, valuable money by not hiring a hotel. What seems as indulgence turns into wisdom on closer examination. Kiran drives a Mercedes, but does not buy expensive jewellery. Mercedes is a business need. Jewellery is not.
Glenmore is a home, but it could be seen as an allegory to the company strategy by being a cluster of units with intimate connections. Visitors tend to linger at the connections, long passages decorated with paintings. Both Kiran and Shaw are art connoisseurs. “It is art that brought us together,” says Kiran. Even Glenmore is not big enough to display all the paintings. They are there in the passages, drawing and family rooms, courtyard and even in the bedrooms. They are stacked in some corners also. Kiran had been collecting religiously, even when she did not have enough money to spend. “I once paid for a Husain in three instalments,” she says. Her taste and caution reflects in her collection. She does not buy expensive paintings. An average purchase is worth Rs 15,000. She has also never sold a painting she has bought. Kiran is not an art investor; she just enjoys art.
Kiran loves to show you around the house, and takes particular care to show you the paintings. Yet, her most proud possession is not a painting but a drawing, done with no pretence to being art. It is a drawing of the double helix by James Watson, which she once found with her driver. Watson had sketched it casually, as an answer to a query from the driver —who had been asked to take special care of the Nobel Prize winner — about what he did for a living. Kiran has it beautifully framed and it looks almost surreal on her walls. Much as she has achieved, Kiran bows to genius, to achievement that she can only admire from a distance.
For years, Kiran managed her busy public life and her business with ease. Things began to change as Biocon grew as a large company. The two years after IPO also coincided with an inflection point in Biocon’s growth. She had to focus more on company strategies and less on other matters. The wider world, it seemed, was becoming distant. Over the years, Kiran had not just built a company. She had also built a set of companies and a team of entrepreneurs. All the business heads in Biocon functioned as surrogate entrepreneurs enjoying full freedom to do what they wanted, while Kiran formulated the broad strategy and functioned as the ambassador. Biocon was now being reborn. Kiran has to oversee it closely.
Life also changed when Kiran and Shaw moved to Glenmore. They were now away from the city, which made it difficult for her to attend functions in the city regularly. The biotech industry was still close to her heart. Over the last few years, Kiran had been trying hard to solve the biotech industry’s problems. “All the years I have known Kiran, she has talked to me only about the industry’s issues,” M.K. Bhan, secretary, Department of Biotechnology, had told BW recently. Kiran had impelled the biotech industry as far as it could go. Now that Biocon is entering a different league of companies, it is time to turn around and push it with all her strength.