Indian woman entrepreneur Kiran Mazumdar Shaw of Biocon

Published by admin on August 6th, 2009 | Tagged Achievers, Billionaires, Business, Entrepreneurship

Indian businesswoman and Entrepreneur Kiran Mazumdar Shaw is the Chairman and Managing Director of Biocon, Country’s leading biotech company. In 2004, Mazumdar Shaw was named the richest woman in India with a net worth of more than Rs 2000 Crore. She was on the Forbes 2005 list of India’s 40 richest people.

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw was born on the 23rd of march, year 1953 in Bangalore, India. She pursued BSc in Zoology from Bangalore University. After college she left for Australia for Post Graduation. She studied brewing at Ballarat University in Melbourne and got the qualification of a master brewer. In 1974 Mazumdar Shaw started working as a trainee brewer with Carlton and United Beverages.  Four years later, she joined Ireland’s Biocon Biochemicals Limited, where she worked as a trainee manager. Soon after that she set up Biocon India, in collaboration with the same Irish Company.

Mazumdar Shaw started Biocon in 1978 form a rented garage space in Bangalore and with an intial investment of just Rs 10000. In the begining she had to face a variety of problems and challenges. Banks were not keen to give her loan because biotechnology was a new field and women entrepreneurship was quite rare. She had a difficult time finding a workplace and convincing people to join her organization. Mazumdar Shaw was however determined to overcome all entrepreneurial barriers and make her venture a huge success.

Biocon began as a industrial enzyme manufacturer and soon after that it started exporting to Europe and the US. Within a few years the business started turning out to be a profitable venture. Mazumdar Shaw always gave importance to reasearch and development activities for taking the company operations to new dimensions. Today, biocon has become a completely integrated, multi million dollar, biopharmaceutical enterprise. Biocon’s went for IPO in 2004. The IPO was over subscribed 33 times. Biocon wants to now establish a global presence and be one of the top ten biotechnology companies in the world.