Meet India’s Self-Made Biologics Brewmaster Billionaire

Forbes

Thwarted in her ambition to become a brewmaster, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw channeled her frustrations into building an international knockoff drug powerhouse and has become one of the world’s most successful—and richest—female entrepreneurs.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2025/05/26/meet-the-self-made-billionaire-who-made-a-fortune-on-copycat-drugs/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Today on Forbes, meet India's self-made biologics brewmaster billionaire.

00:07Kieran Mazumdar Shah's booming drug business started not in a laboratory, but in a tin-roofed shed in Bangaluru,

00:15the city formerly known as Bangalore, and the capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka.

00:21Inside, the 25-year-old was using the knowledge she had learned studying beer brewing in Australia

00:26to ferment enzymes for customers like Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice.

00:31Originally, she had wanted to be like her father, who was the head brewmaster at United Breweries,

00:36the big Indian firm now owned by Heineken and famous for its Kingfisher beer.

00:41But it was 1978, and she couldn't find a job. No one wanted to hire a woman as a brewer.

00:48Distraught and disillusioned, Mazumdar Shah put her education to another use, making enzymes for industrial uses.

00:55In partnership with an Irish entrepreneur who owned a company called Biocon,

01:00and who was looking to expand to India, she set up shop inside that hot shed.

01:05She says, quote,

01:06I call myself an accidental entrepreneur.

01:10The business became successful enough that Unilever bought it in the 1980s,

01:14along with its Irish parent.

01:16Mazumdar Shah stayed on to run the unit from Bangaluru until 1998,

01:21when she and her late husband, John Shaw, bought back Unilever's steak for about $2 million.

01:27It was a steal.

01:28She would eventually sell the enzymes business to Denmark's Novozymes for $115 million in 2007.

01:35By then, she had bigger things in mind.

01:38In 2000, Biocon began brewing up pharmaceuticals, starting with insulin.

01:43Insulin is a type of so-called biologic, or a drug derived from a living source.

01:49Traditionally, a modified version of E. coli bacteria in insulin's case.

01:54Biocon uses yeast.

01:56The company's India base enabled it to make these biologics cheaper than big western pharma outfits.

02:02Insulin is one of the simplest biologics,

02:05which are increasingly used to treat everything from cancer to immune system disorders.

02:09More complicated biologics like gene therapies and monoclonal antibodies are difficult to make,

02:16and extremely expensive.

02:18One drug for children with spinal muscular atrophy, for instance,

02:21costs more than $2 million for the one-dose treatment.

02:25It's an enormous market, but exactly how big is impossible to say.

02:30Biologics accounted for $324 billion in spending at list prices in 2023,

02:36according to healthcare research firm IQVIA.

02:39But that number doesn't account for the significant rebates

02:42that branded drug makers often offer to keep their market share,

02:46lowering what insurers and patients pay, but obfuscating total costs.

02:51While a butler serves tea at her Manhattan apartment,

02:54which is adorned with landscapes by Scottish artists George Devlin and Archie Forrest,

02:59Mazumdar Shah says,

03:01These are very complex, expensive drugs,

03:04and therefore it's important that companies like ours focus on affordable access.

03:10Mazumdar Shah, now 72 years old,

03:13started out in the Indian market, but now sells drugs globally,

03:16and is increasingly focused on the US and Canada,

03:19which represents some 40% of its biologic sales.

03:23She realized early that finding a cheaper way to make such complex,

03:26life-saving drugs not only made them more accessible, but was also good business.

03:32Today, Biocon, which is publicly traded in India,

03:36brings in $1.9 billion in revenue by selling dozens of generic drugs and so-called biosimilar medications.

03:44The company also does contract research for other companies through its publicly traded subsidiary, Syngine.

03:49While Forbes' self-made women list includes only women from the United States,

03:55Mazumdar Shah would easily make the top 20 were she American.

03:59She is one of the world's wealthiest self-made female entrepreneurs,

04:03with a fortune that Forbes estimates to be $3.2 billion.

04:08The biggest part of her empire is a majority-owned private subsidiary called Biocon Biologics,

04:13which focuses on biosimilars and represents nearly 55% of the parent company's revenue.

04:20Akin to what generics are for chemically synthesized drugs,

04:23these cheaper alternatives mimic biologic drugs.

04:27As with generics, companies like Mazumdar Shah's are allowed to develop biosimilars

04:31after a brand-name drug's patents expire.

04:35Though biosimilars are much more expensive to make than generics,

04:39requiring more than $100 million to develop,

04:41they can drastically reduce patient costs.

04:45IQVIA estimates biosimilars have saved the U.S. healthcare system

04:48$36 billion at list prices since 2015.

04:53With 118 more biologic drugs set to lose patent protection by 2035,

04:59the market for their cheaper mimics could be about to boom.

05:03For full coverage, check out Amy Feldman's piece on Forbes.com.

05:09This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes, thanks for tuning in.

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