Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

In 1975 she qualified as a master brewer in Australia.

She came back to India ready to run a brewery, the way her father had done all his life.

The industry was not ready to accept a woman master brewer.

If you think a closed door decides your career, read the story of Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw.

She grew up around beer.

Her father was a master brewer, which was already unusual for a Gujarati family from a state where alcohol is banned.

She first wanted to be a doctor. That did not work out.

So she went to Ballarat in Australia and trained in brewing.

Then came the part nobody had a plan for.

She had the qualification. India had no job for her.

In 1978 she talked a small Irish company into starting a joint venture with her.

That is how Biocon began.

Her office was her garage. Her bank balance was a handful of rupees.

She started making enzymes for industry. Enzymes = natural proteins that break things down, used in food, drinks and medicine

And here is the part I love.

Her first product was papain, an enzyme taken from papaya.

Its job? To stop chilled beer from going hazy.

The industry that refused to give her a job became her first customer.

Then the ground shifted.

In 1989 her Irish partner sold its share to Unilever, and suddenly a giant foreign company owned a piece of the business she had built from a garage.

In 1998 she and her husband John Shaw bought Unilever out.

Biocon was finally hers.

In 2004 Biocon listed on the stock market.

It became only the second Indian company ever to cross $1 billion in value on its first day of trading.

Now the hard truth.

Her fight was real, but it was not poverty.

Her father ran breweries and she studied abroad.

The wall she hit was gender, not money.

Biocon has had bad years too.

US inspectors have flagged problems at its plants, and one insulin product got held up because of it.

A $3.3 billion deal in 2022 left the company carrying heavy debt.

And she lost John, her husband and business partner, in October 2022.

Today Biocon's yearly income is over ₹17,000 crore.

One of Asia's largest insulin plants belongs to her company.

Forbes puts her wealth at about $2.9 billion.

Padma Shri. Padma Bhushan.

She never got the brewery job.

She built the company that the breweries buy from.

✍🏻 Mantra Joshi

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