Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw
She is India's first biotech entrepreneur. She founded Biocon in 1978 to create industrial enzymes. Biocon, today a billion-dollar company and Asia's largest biopharma concern, took birth in the garage of Mazumdar-Shaw's rented home in Bangalore, with a seed capital of Rs 10,000. The company was initially into extracting papain, an enzyme from payaya. But by 1990, Biocon started an in-house research programme in solid substrate fermentation technology that permitted it to create enzymes from pilot to plant level. Later the company diversified into a wide array of products and services including diabetes, oncology and auto-immune disease. Mazumdar also represents the biopharma industry at various levels. She is currently on the Advisory Council of the Government's Department of Biotechnology. Besides she also has interest in arts and has authored 'Ale and Arty,' a Coffee table book about brewing beer illustrated by paintings of some of India's renowned artists.
