Biocon’s path to affordable innovation

A conversation with Kiran Mazumdar Shaw on The BioCentury Show

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw started Biocon in a garage in Bangalore, India in 1978. In 2022, the company’s revenues exceeded $1 billion from sales of innovative drugs, biosimilars, generics and research services. Its $3.4 billion acquisition in February of the biosimilars business of Viatris Inc. (NASDAQ:VTRS) has made it one of the largest biosimilars players in the U.S. and Europe.

In an interview with BioCentury, Mazumdar Shaw, executive chair of Biocon Ltd. (NSE:BIOCON; BSE:532523) and Biocon Biologics Ltd., described the challenges she overcame as a young, female CEO at a time when gender discrimination was pervasive in India and most start-ups were run by “gray-haired men who had left large companies to start their own businesses.”

The theme that runs through Biocon’s businesses is affordable innovation. The company has leveraged scale — it has sold over 3 billion doses of insulin worldwide — and the low cost of India’s talent pool to bring products to market at prices below those charged by its multinational pharmaceutical company competitors.

While there is an active biotech start-up ecosystem in India, no other companies have emerged that approach its global aspirations to develop and market innovative and biosimilar medicines. Mazumdar Shaw attributed the absence of peers to risk aversion among Indian entrepreneurs who prefer the predictability and short development times of the generic drug business to businesses that are subject to scientific, clinical and regulatory risks.