The Good Doctor Swati Piramal
Why Swati Piramal refuses to get bogged down in muddy waters
When she decided to contest the election for membership of
the Harvard Board of Overseers this year, Swati Piramal was quite prepared to
lose. If she had, the director of Piramal Healthcare (and wife of chairman Ajay
Piramal) would have been in the August company of Barack Obama and Anand
Mahindra, both of whom contested and lost the election in their time. But
Piramal, an alumnus of the Harvard School of Public Health, is on a roll these
days. She has won her place on
the Harvard Board, a crowning achievement that she holds even higher than the Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Merite she received from French President Jacques Chirac in 2006. In an interview with CD, Piramal talks about loyalty, PERT charts and why Indian scientists will find a cure for cancer. Excerpts:
What does achievement mean to you?
It’s the feeling of crossing a certain finishing line. We bought a small company for Rs 18 crore in 1988 and made it one of the top five Indian pharma companies by 2010. That was an achievement. Now we’ve sold half of it to Abbott for $3.8 billion. Achievement requires hard work and perseverance. It’s easy to get pessimistic and give up doing what you need to do. Some of the nation’s problems are so huge. You look at the public health figures like infant mortality and you might feel like giving up. But rather than get bogged down in the muddy water, you have to rise above it like a lotus. You can take up a part of the larger problem and work on it. When you achieve something, others will follow and it becomes a movement. We started a project called ‘Doc In The Box’ in the Naxal areas of Andhra Pradesh, which is like that.
What does it take for an institution to inspire the kind of loyalty Harvard does?
It’s to do with the experience. From the moment you enter, your mind meets the best
minds from 26 different countries. You learn so much from your classmates, from the faculty. And of course, there’s this whole history. I’m on t h e board of IIT-Bombay and I’ve often told them they’re too focused on engineering. They teach very little of life sciences. The world is getting broad-based, they need to do so too.
How are women doing in the workplace?
Very well, from what I see. When I was studying medicine at KEM, only 20% of the students in my batch were women. Now it is up to 50%. Our drug discovery facility staff in Goregaon is 50% female.
What’s it like, working in partnership with your husband?
It’s been good. We don’t do the same things. My own passion is drug discovery. There are many new business opportunities, so there’s enough work for both of us.
Where should people invest surplus cash?
You should invest in something you know. After selling Abbott, it was difficult to decide where to invest the money. Those days, everyone was investing in power, coal. I told my husband, maybe we should we do the same. He said power doesn’t play to our strengths, which is knowledgebased. We know healthcare, so that is what we have decided to invest in. We recently acquired an American company, the Decision Resources group, which provides analytics services to the healthcare industry.
Do you enjoy management?
Yes I do. When I went to Harvard, I already knew enough about medicine. I wanted to know management. So most of the courses I did were at Harvard Business School.
What is the most challenging part of being a manager?
Persevering with an idea long enough to see it through. And managing complexity. If you make a PERT (Program Evaluation Review Technique) chart of what it takes to see a drug molecule through to regulator approval, you’ll realise what a complex project it is. I believe management as a science. I don’t see people management as difficult at all. It has always been one of our greatest strengths.
What’s the main difference between family and professional management?
Family management tends to think long term. Professional heads think more short-term.
Can Indian scientists find a cure for cancer?
Ten years ago, I would have said I don’t know. Today, I believe we can and so do our scientists. Our company is working in the fields of pancreatic and head and neck cancer. We have a molecule to fight cancer, which came from a plant that is found in the hills outside Mumbai. Indian regulators now need to change with the times. Right now they are just not equipped to deal with a drug discovered by an Indian research laboratory, which means they have to be the first to approve it in the world. They would prefer it to be approved somewhere else in the world, like in Europe or the USA. We have to believe, as a nation, that it is possible for Indian scientists to make major breakthroughs in medicine.
Is sugar the new tobacco?
Well, I’m a diabetic, so I’m not allowed to have it myself. But I do believe one should eat natural foods to the maximum possible extent. White foods like sugar and flour are refined foods and less natural. But it has never been easy challenging agricultural products like sugar and tobacco.
the Harvard Board, a crowning achievement that she holds even higher than the Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Merite she received from French President Jacques Chirac in 2006. In an interview with CD, Piramal talks about loyalty, PERT charts and why Indian scientists will find a cure for cancer. Excerpts:
What does achievement mean to you?
It’s the feeling of crossing a certain finishing line. We bought a small company for Rs 18 crore in 1988 and made it one of the top five Indian pharma companies by 2010. That was an achievement. Now we’ve sold half of it to Abbott for $3.8 billion. Achievement requires hard work and perseverance. It’s easy to get pessimistic and give up doing what you need to do. Some of the nation’s problems are so huge. You look at the public health figures like infant mortality and you might feel like giving up. But rather than get bogged down in the muddy water, you have to rise above it like a lotus. You can take up a part of the larger problem and work on it. When you achieve something, others will follow and it becomes a movement. We started a project called ‘Doc In The Box’ in the Naxal areas of Andhra Pradesh, which is like that.
What does it take for an institution to inspire the kind of loyalty Harvard does?
It’s to do with the experience. From the moment you enter, your mind meets the best
minds from 26 different countries. You learn so much from your classmates, from the faculty. And of course, there’s this whole history. I’m on t h e board of IIT-Bombay and I’ve often told them they’re too focused on engineering. They teach very little of life sciences. The world is getting broad-based, they need to do so too.
How are women doing in the workplace?
Very well, from what I see. When I was studying medicine at KEM, only 20% of the students in my batch were women. Now it is up to 50%. Our drug discovery facility staff in Goregaon is 50% female.
What’s it like, working in partnership with your husband?
It’s been good. We don’t do the same things. My own passion is drug discovery. There are many new business opportunities, so there’s enough work for both of us.
Where should people invest surplus cash?
You should invest in something you know. After selling Abbott, it was difficult to decide where to invest the money. Those days, everyone was investing in power, coal. I told my husband, maybe we should we do the same. He said power doesn’t play to our strengths, which is knowledgebased. We know healthcare, so that is what we have decided to invest in. We recently acquired an American company, the Decision Resources group, which provides analytics services to the healthcare industry.
Do you enjoy management?
Yes I do. When I went to Harvard, I already knew enough about medicine. I wanted to know management. So most of the courses I did were at Harvard Business School.
What is the most challenging part of being a manager?
Persevering with an idea long enough to see it through. And managing complexity. If you make a PERT (Program Evaluation Review Technique) chart of what it takes to see a drug molecule through to regulator approval, you’ll realise what a complex project it is. I believe management as a science. I don’t see people management as difficult at all. It has always been one of our greatest strengths.
What’s the main difference between family and professional management?
Family management tends to think long term. Professional heads think more short-term.
Can Indian scientists find a cure for cancer?
Ten years ago, I would have said I don’t know. Today, I believe we can and so do our scientists. Our company is working in the fields of pancreatic and head and neck cancer. We have a molecule to fight cancer, which came from a plant that is found in the hills outside Mumbai. Indian regulators now need to change with the times. Right now they are just not equipped to deal with a drug discovered by an Indian research laboratory, which means they have to be the first to approve it in the world. They would prefer it to be approved somewhere else in the world, like in Europe or the USA. We have to believe, as a nation, that it is possible for Indian scientists to make major breakthroughs in medicine.
Is sugar the new tobacco?
Well, I’m a diabetic, so I’m not allowed to have it myself. But I do believe one should eat natural foods to the maximum possible extent. White foods like sugar and flour are refined foods and less natural. But it has never been easy challenging agricultural products like sugar and tobacco.
——— Dibeyendu Ganguly
120615
No comments:
Post a Comment