Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw: Beer, brewing and biotech

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Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service.

Every episode, we pick a billionaire and find out how they made their money.

And then we judge them.

Are they good, bad, or just another billionaire?

I'm Simon Jack, the BBC's business editor.

And I'm Zhang Singh.

I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.

Our billionaire this episode is India's first self-made female billionaire.

You may not have heard of her, but you probably have at some point interacted with the things she's had a hand in making because she is very big in biotech.

Yep, Kiran Mazumda Shaw has made her money from a company called Biocon, which is India's biggest biopharmaceutical company.

So she makes her money in the lucrative industry of medicine.

And it's a fascinating story because Biocon actually started off extracting enzymes from the fruit of the papaya tree and enzymes are a big part of the story we'll explain later.

Right now, however, the company is Asia's biggest insulin producer.

The company has filed over 1700 patents globally, nearly 900 of which have been granted.

And in 2010, she was named among Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.

But while she's now a biotech billionaire, she started out trying to brew beer.

Yes, and it's a very interesting story because...

Fascinating.

If you like a pint of beer, maybe you could become a billionaire.

Who knows?

Yeah, because enzymes are very important in that.

And I thought I knew what an enzyme was, but I just thought I'd check.

And they're basically things which aid chemical processes like digestion, going to the loo, getting drunk.

Fermenting beer.

Fermenting beer.

And all sorts of other types of chemicals.

She trained to become a master beer brewer, was unable to get a job in brewing because of gender bias in India.

And that's why she calls herself an accidental entrepreneur.

In fact, she says if there hadn't been a gender bias in 1978, I would never have started Biocon, the company which made her fortune.

But she may very well have brewed her own beer.

She may well have done.

So let's go all the way back to the beginning from zero to a million.

Kiran Mazundar, as it was then, was born in 1953 in Bangalore, now Bengaluru, in South India.

She had a middle-class upbringing and described her childhood as very charmed.

Yeah, Bengaluru is now famed as India's Silicon Valley, but it was for a long time the science capital of India.

Yeah, Kieran has said that, you know, they had the famous Indian Institute of Science, the National Aeronautical Laboratory, there was a science museum, which we used to frequent quite a lot.

So as kids, we grew up loving science.

So it sounds like a...

very smart, intelligent, educated family.

Yeah, and her father was sort of a scientist.

He was the head brewmaster at United Breweries.

That means he was in charge of a brewery India's largest beer company, and they brewed for other people like Heinekern and Amstel and other big brands.

Her family actually lived in the staff compound at the brewery, and she says that her and her two younger brothers used to play hide and seek in the cellars.

She always loved the aroma of brewing.

Yes, it's a very strange if you ever been to a brewery, it's a kind of really heady, sort of syrupy sweet tea, right?

Wheat, exactly.

So, anyway, while she she was huffing the beer aroma.

While she was inhaling the beer aroma, she went to a private high school and then to Bangalore University.

She'd really wanted to go to medical school, but she actually failed the scholarship test.

So she ended up studying biology and zoology, which she thought was the next best thing.

In fact, she applied for medical school after graduating university, but was again rejected, luckily, as it turns out.

Because this is when her dad's influence really comes to the forefront.

I really like the background here because her father was, she says, a man way ahead of his times, liberated, and he really believed he needed to bring up his sons and his daughter in the same way.

Pretty unusual for India in the 1960s.

That's right.

So Kieran credits her father for her whole attitude to society and life in general.

Not to forget about her mother, she says her mother was also very supportive, but that she did confess secretly, quote, that she would have liked me to be a bit more traditional, but your father wouldn't let it be that way.

Even so, when her father suggests that she follows in his footsteps and studies fermentation science to become a brewmaster like him, she herself, Kieran, is a bit worried about being a woman in that field.

I think she knows the reality of the situation then.

Yeah, she does indeed.

But her father actually ends up convincing her that brewing is the oldest form of biotechnology known to man

and that she should look at it as a science.

I mean, this is maybe the best justification I've ever heard for going to the pub.

It's actually science, guys.

It's science, darling.

Yes, yeah.

So in in 1974, at the age of 21, she goes to a college in Melbourne, Australia, to study malting and brewing.

Of course, Australia, no stranger to beer.

No, they certainly are not.

And this is actually where her dad sent many of his young brewers.

And at first, she was kind of worried about what she'd learned there, but she became fascinated by the science of brewing beer.

She says, I found the whole fermentation science very exciting.

I was very proud then to become a brewmaster.

But guess what?

Kieran was the only woman on her brewing course, so this was a pretty defining time for her.

She says of her male fellow students: for a couple of months, they came with a patronising attitude, but I think very soon they realised I was pretty competent.

I mean, she was more than competent.

She actually graduated top of the class, and also she learned to drink with the boys.

Very important skill.

So she returned to India, top of the world, self-assured, independent, competitive.

But that's when she comes back down to earth with a bump.

Let's hear her take up the story talking to Rahul Tandon of the BBC World Service in 2022.

You know, I was in for a rude shock when I got back because I couldn't get a job.

What would people say to you when you went for a job?

What sort of comments did you get in those days?

All of them said, look, you're very well qualified and we'd love to hire you, but you know, it's very tough for us to have a woman in our leadership team in a brewery because I don't think it'll be acceptable.

This would have been in the 1970s, at the time time when India had had a female prime minister in Indra Gandhi running the country, but it didn't extend to making alcohol.

No, it didn't extend to the business world, unfortunately.

Fascinating.

So she is trying every brewer in India, but as you heard there, she was told it's a man's job, she's high risk, fellow workers, unions won't accept her as a member of the brewmaster fraternity.

And I think this is quite unusual for a lot of our billionaires because she actually at this point sort of gives up on her dream.

She kind of realises she can't change India's attitude to women by herself and she can't succeed alone.

And she actually pivots.

She does get some consulting work in the brewing industry.

After two years, she becomes disillusioned.

It's not going anywhere.

She gives up that dream of being a brewmaster in India, but she doesn't give up the dream of becoming a brewmaster altogether and looks to Europe.

So she figures the gender bias there won't be as severe.

And she is right.

She gets a job in Scotland.

But before she's even moved to Scotland, she meets the guy who's going to change her life.

Yeah, an Irish entrepreneur called Les Auchincloss, the founder of something called Biocon Biochemicals of Cork, Ireland.

So his company produces enzymes used in brewing, food packaging, textiles.

And Les wants to set up an Indian business.

So he can source a very specific enzyme used to tenderize meat that's extracted from papaya, which is, of course, widely cultivated in India.

A specific enzyme to tenderize meat extracted from papaya.

That is niche.

It is very niche.

But you know what?

It's not unheard of.

I think you can use lots of things to tenderize meat, but I've never heard of papaya.

But he can't set up a business by himself because Indian law doesn't allow foreign businesses to operate in the country without local partners owning a big chunk of the business.

And we've actually discussed this before in our episode of Narayana Murti, who's the founder of Infosys and also the father-in-law of former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Yeah, basically, the Indian government at that time was very protectionist.

It requires foreign companies to have Indian partners who have at least 70% ownership of the company.

So, through mutual contacts in Australia, Les had heard of Kieran, so he arranges this urgent meeting with her when he's in India.

And they meet for breakfast because Kieran is in a rush to catch a train.

Don't forget she's got that job in Scotland waiting.

Yeah, and Les is so impressed by her that he asked Kieran to be his Indian partner and to run the business.

He said she was so focused and had such a forceful personality.

I think you can tell a bit of that from that clip we'd played that I knew she could hold her own.

Initially, Kiran turns him down.

She says, I'm the last person you should ask because she has no business experience.

I've got no money to invest.

Plus, she knows how hard it is to be a woman in business in India, firsthand.

But Les convinces her, you know.

After all, she's always wanted to stay in India.

Here was her chance.

And they make a deal that Les will guarantee her another brewmaster job, exactly like the one she ends up giving up in Scotland, if things haven't worked out after the first six months.

Okay, so here we go.

Kiran starts the business with Les, putting in all her life savings.

That's about 10,000 rupees.

That would be in about $1,000 back in 1978.

And in exchange, she gets 70% of the company.

And instead of going to Scotland, she ends up going to Ireland for six months of training at Biocon in Cork.

And then once she's back in India, Les pretty much leaves her to it.

So she writes a mission statement, gets the permits that she needs, and Biocon India is born.

But she's also, as you can probably tell, short of money.

So like a lot of our entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, she starts the business in a garage and this one is in her rented home in Bangalore.

So she's back in Bangalore.

She again has pretty much the same problems she had in brewing, sexism.

Yeah, it's nearly impossible to find anybody to work for her because she's a woman and she gets lots of applicants, but she says it's a big problem when they just turned up and they were greeted by some woman in a garage.

Yeah, so she said even female applicants would assume that she was the secretary, announced, I'm sorry, I've got a meeting with the managing director.

Yes.

And then she said she sought 40 candidates before she found two retired car mechanics who would agree to work for her.

Yeah, her next big struggle was financing the business.

She needed to get some credit, someone to lend her some money.

She said, I was only 25 years old.

The banks felt I was a girl trying to run a business which nobody understood.

She describes herself as being high risk in every sense of the word.

And at the time as well, there's no culture of risk-taking venture capitalism in India.

They're still pretty protectionist at this time.

Yeah, but Kieran finally finds a backer following another chance meeting at a friend's wedding.

He's a banker and like Les, he's super impressed by her, so he agrees to buy an equity stake, an ownership stake in the company.

Yeah, it's so interesting how Kieran's story is kind of marked by these big pivotal meetings.

Yeah, we've had so many of those in our billionaire stories, haven't we?

There's, you know, there's sliding doors moments.

if that meeting hadn't happened if Michael Jordan's mum hadn't said to him go and see what Nike have to say.

Yeah, it makes you really worry about all the emails you're missing in your inbox.

People asking to meet for a coffee.

Who knows?

That might be the person who makes you a billionaire.

It makes me think that I've missed a chance breakfast meeting, which could have propelled me to great riches myself.

It hasn't happened yet.

In the enzyme industry, who knows?

Anyway, she gets some credit.

She can properly get the company moving.

She built her first factory, which is a 3,000-square-foot shed near the garage and they expand beyond enzymes from papayas into an enzyme called isenglass which is used to clarify beer and it's made from tropical catfish that's so great I thought that the other one was niche but tropical catfish enzymes but anyway Biocon begins growing microbes in these big large vats under precise temperatures and pressures which is a bit like brewing it really is and it's actually familiar to Kieran but she said it was a big setback when I realized the scaling up assumptions I had used did not work so making enzymes for food and production clearly quite different from making enzymes for beer.

But she persevered.

Her backer was understanding.

And within a year, Biocon India is manufacturing enzymes to export to the US and Europe.

It was the first Indian company to do that.

And that early success means Kieran is able to buy a property.

Now it's going cheap because it's the only place on a rural road in the middle of nowhere.

No facilities, not even a phone line.

So she has to drive for miles to every meeting.

But there is a lot of space, 20 acres, and that's important because she says, I never imagined BioCon would be so big when I started out, but I did dream of at least building this campus to its full capacity, which is why I bought 20 acres.

I knew I could do something useful with 20 acres.

That's a very, very large dose of foresight, isn't it?

Yeah, for sure.

So through the 1980s, BioCon does well, but she started a science business in a country with some limitations at the time.

You know, there's poor infrastructure, unreliable power, the water isn't that clean, labs aren't that sterile, there's a lack of research equipment and a limited number of trained workers.

But she perseveres, she invests in research and development, and they pioneer some new techniques for cultivating these enzymes.

And they kind of collide with a really interesting time in Indian, in the Indian history, because the government regulation of businesses starts loosening up.

So venture capitalism is becoming more common.

Yeah, I think that probably a lot of that is to do with the burgeoning tech industry, which is beginning to happen in Bangalore.

They're beginning to see these partnerships, which you've talked about before, like Infosys, for example, was partnering in the US.

So, India was seen as actually a really valuable reserve of talent and technological ability.

So, suddenly, it wasn't such a weird thing having partnerships with other people.

So, really, she's riding that kind of backdrop in political and economic development.

Exactly.

So, in 1987, BioCon gets a quarter of a million US dollar investment from an investment bank, and Kiran builds a new plant.

But then, in 1989, two years later, Les, the Irish businessman who was her first partner, exits the picture.

He actually sells his whole company to Unilever.

Yeah, Unilever are a massive multinational company.

They make all sorts of things from sort of toothpaste, washing powder, you name it.

But they buy Biocon of Ireland and end up with a stake in Biocon India.

Kind of by accident.

Yep, you've bought this huge shopping bag and now you're just looking at all the things.

What's in it?

But they soon realise to their credit that the Indian company is actually really valuable because of the technology it's developed.

So they decide they want to increase their stake, which Indian law now allows.

So they attempt to buy out the investment bank that gave the initial money, but the bank is well aware of how much this company is worth and instead they quadruple their investment.

So Kiran says initially she had no idea that this IP she created, you know,

intellectual property, that it was worth so much.

But now it's starting to make her very rich.

And she's already becoming known as a very significant businesswoman in India.

She's recognized by the government, which awards her something called the Padma Shri, which is a sort of civilian honor in Indian society, given to people who make exceptional contributions to the nation's progress.

It's a bit like an MBE or an OBE here in the UK, the Les Gendon, for example, in France, that kind of stuff.

So in the 90s, Kieran plans to make an even bigger move.

She wants to expand from enzymes into medicines, which, you know, isn't actually that far off from each other.

She realizes that enzymes alone won't fulfill these ambitious plans to scale up that business and fill up that 20-acre compound.

And medicine is a massive marketplace.

I mean the world medicine market is worth trillions of dollars.

And actually India is becoming quite a big player in this.

So she sets up this subsidiary company which focuses purely on research and development.

But then her ambitions are about to get stifled by an unwanted partner.

Yeah, we've spoken before, I think it was the episode on Jim Ratcliffe, the guy who went, Indie Ols is now a big owner of Manchester United, how big multinationals were selling off various bits and pieces of their company in the 1990s.

Now, he took advantage, bought up lots of divisions, bundled them all up.

You can listen back to our feed on that episode if you haven't already.

But this trend affects Biocon too, because Unilever decides to sell its specialty chemicals division, which includes Biocon, to another big multinational.

So there's a bit of horse trading going on here.

Yeah, so that multinational has no interest in drug research whatsoever.

And Kieran is desperate to avoid this partnership.

Luckily, a partner she she very much does want is about to save her.

So in the 90s, Kieran has become close to a Scotsman working in India named John Shaw.

Now you'll recognise the last name.

You know what's about to happen.

Yeah, they've been spending a lot of time together.

Kieran said they shared interests in art and golf.

Classic billionaire hobbies, although she's not a billionaire at this point, don't forget.

They only realize they are in love when John's company decides to return him to Europe.

So they try a long-distance relationship for a while, but apparently miss each other just too much.

So in 1998, John returns to India, they get married, and she becomes Kiran Mazunda Shaw.

Their wedding mixed Hindu and Christian traditions, and she says her family accepted him completely, which is not that surprising given what we know about the family and what her dad was like.

Exactly.

I think it's really sweet, actually.

It's a very sweet story.

It's clearly a meeting of equals.

John comes to the rescue to save Biocon from the buyout from Unilever by another big multinational.

And there's a clause in Kieran's contract with Unilever, which gives her the first option to buy the company.

So John raises the $2 million necessary to stop the sale and buys the stake in Biocon India for Kieran.

As she jokingly refers to this as her dowry.

So John leaves his job as chairman of a fabric manufacturer and joins Biocon.

And the exact size of Unilever's stake in Biocon is unclear.

But we can say for sure that her stake in Biocon was definitely worth more than 2 million.

So by 1999, Kieran is a millionaire.

Okay, but how does she go from a million, which is, you know, millionaires are turn a penny, to a billion, which is a much, much bigger number.

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So once Kieran and her husband John have full control of the company, they don't look back.

And this, I mean, I think this is quite romantic, really.

It is the most romantic story we've had in good bad quality.

I think it is, isn't it?

Right.

This is a little love story.

It's almost like a little mini-series, this.

So they together are able to make good on Kieran's plan to pivot the business to medicine.

And this is a smart move because, as we've already discussed, medicine is really big business and getting bigger.

So, they set up a subsidiary focused on clinical research trials to develop new and also generic medicines.

And their first big success is in manufacturing statins.

So, if you don't know what those are, they are cholesterol-fighting drugs, which are really common today, really prescribed quite widely.

Yeah, and Kieran realizes the patent for a drug called lovastatin has expired, which means they can manufacture a generic version.

And this is a big part of the drugs industry, particularly in India.

So, medicines are patented, and when the patents run out or expire, any company can basically use that formula to make what's called a generic version of the drug.

And this works brilliantly for Biocon.

And Kieran is now estimating that one in two tablets of this particular statin that are now sold are Biocon.

So, they've really got a big chunk of that market.

And statins in general now account for over 50% of Biocon's total revenue, but she's not limiting herself to statins.

So she targets insulin next, which is a drug produced using

fermentation, something that Biocon specialized in as enzyme producers.

I had no idea that insulin was created through fermentation because it's used, obviously, its biggest use is to treat diabetes.

It's also a disease which is highly prevalent in India.

One recent study estimated 100 million people in India suffer from it.

So there's a massive market right on their doorstep there.

But before they even go into production on insulin, Kirin plans an even bigger move.

In 2004, Kiran lists Biocon on the Indian stock market.

This is where you sell shares and so anyone can come along and buy it and it's generally done.

You sell a stake in the company to raise additional money.

And after taking advice from another of our billionaires, Narayana Murti, remember, who is the boss of InfoSys,

she realises that the timing is perfect for Biocon's IPO, this share sale.

Excitement about the potential for their insulin production helps fuel the speculation in the company.

Before the IPO, they'd valued the business around $500 to $600 million, but on the day Biocon was actually sold, the number of people applying to buy shares was 33 times more than the number of shares they were actually selling.

And that's big, isn't it?

That's a huge oversubscription.

That means the appetite for this is red hot.

So by the time trading closed on its first day, BioCon had a market value.

It ended up with $1 billion.

Yeah, that made BioCon only the second Indian company valued at $1 billion on its first day of listing.

So this has gone spectacularly well.

It also means that Kieran, who has a nearly 40% stake in the company, becomes the richest self-made woman in India worth a core $400 million.

Which makes her a bit of a superstar in India.

She was named Business Woman of the Year by Indian business newspapers.

She received an honorary doctorate from the university where she studied brewing.

And the now public company continued to grow.

Its move into insulin was a huge success.

Biocon BioCon is actually now Asia's largest insulin producer.

And she's getting international recognition as well.

In 2010, she's named among Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.

And in 2014, Forbes, the US business magazine, puts her on their billionaires list with a net worth of $1.2 billion.

So there you have it.

Kieran is officially a billionaire.

And actually, at the time, India's only female self-made billionaire.

So she's officially a billionaire, but let's take the story beyond a billion.

What's happened since then?

She's currently worth about 2.7 billion.

Not the first time we've seen that phenomenon happen.

Once they get first to something, they begin to accelerate rather than slow down.

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

Yeah.

And she's announced her intention to create what she calls a blockbuster drug.

The thing a blockbuster drug in the West is a billion-dollar drug, but for her, a blockbuster drug is about a billion patients.

Now, it's not always been smooth sailing.

There has been some scandal at Biocon.

In 2022, senior executives at the company were among five people arrested amid bribery allegations.

Yeah, a drug controller was alleged to have accepted payment for recommending a drug for licensing following a clinical trial, sort of giving you a little push through the regulatory process.

Biocon has strenuously denied the allegation, saying all our product approvals are backed by clinical and science data.

Yeah, that case is ongoing.

And today, BioCon operates in 120 countries.

Yeah, they are huge and they probably occupy far more significant land than just 20 acres because they have 16,500 employees.

And Kieran herself is also on the board at United Breweries.

Isn't that a nice return to the industry where she started out?

That was where her father worked, of course, if you remember.

And she and her brothers played in the cellars when she was a child.

I mean, it writes itself, this, doesn't it yeah so in a roundabout way she actually did get into brewing after all yeah fine came back to sit on the board so listen it's a fascinating story really it's got against the old sexism triumphing over that it's got love a love got a romantic story in there as well it's also got groundbreaking science uh huge market share and things like insulin so With all of those factors in mind, we've got to judge her.

Is she good, bad, or just another billionaire?

We've got a few categories that we run through, and we start out just with the sort of absolute wealth and how they spend it.

So she's not in the top tier of billionaires, as you probably guessed.

She's, I think, around 1200th on the rich list.

So on that one, we have to score her pretty low.

She's entry-level billionaire, really, isn't she?

In the low single-digit.

So I'm going to give her a two.

I'll probably give her a three.

She is India's first self-made women billionaire.

True, true.

Yes, though.

She is unique in that regard.

Okay, I'm going to bump it up to four and see if we can outbid each other.

I think.

Oh, I think five out of ten.

Oh, okay.

Let's go to stop right there.

Right, yes.

Otherwise, it's going to get ridiculous.

We have another category, though, which is how far have they come in their story from their beginnings to where they are now?

So it's the Ragster Riches category.

Quite a wealthy family.

She went to private school.

Her father had big connections, sent her off to start out in her brewing career, which ended up being, you know, actually working out really well.

And her husband helped her buy out her own business.

So, you know, she didn't exactly start from nothing.

She did have some, a very good contacts book.

But the sexism thing's interesting.

We've talked a lot about how tough it was being a female business person in India.

Yeah, let alone, you know, in the 70s.

I mean.

And

in the brewing industry, to boot.

I know.

I mean, you still read articles today about women in the brewing industry in the UK saying they face sexism.

So I can only imagine how bad it was for her back then.

Okay, so not rags to riches, but overcoming quite a few odds along the way.

I'm going to give her a five.

Yeah, I'm going to give her, I don't know, probably a six out of ten.

I feel like it must have been pretty horrible experiencing that kind of sexism in the 70s.

So you're giving her six and I'm giving her five.

Then there's villainy.

They've done people over.

Have they made a few ruthless moves?

Have they swindled people along the way?

Villainy.

I mean, apart from the allegations currently being investigated at Balcon, which...

don't relate to her personally.

She doesn't seem to have really done many people over.

We've scratched our heads in the past when we've talked about medical billionaires, about the sort of ethics of making a ton of money out of stuff, which is to try and save people's lives.

But that is the world we live in, and that is how blockbuster drugs get developed.

And, you know, all of these companies are not charities.

Yes, that is true.

But she puts a lot of money into research and development.

And, you know, it's interesting what she says about developing a blockbuster drug, where it's not about the billion-dollar drug for her.

It's about being able to help a billion patients.

Yeah, so I'm going to give her, you know,

case pending doesn't involve her.

So I'm going to give her a zero for villainy.

Yeah, I mean, maybe I'll hedge my bets and give her a one.

But for now, I can't see that she's done anything particularly bad.

So what about doing things which are particularly good?

We have a philanthropy category.

She actually doesn't like the term philanthropy, which is interesting.

She's much like Narayana Murti.

They both use the term compassionate capitalist.

They believe that properly applied business business models can provide a foundation for sustainable social progress.

I mean, it's interesting that she'd shy away from that word.

Well, whether she likes the word or not, she still scores pretty high because in 2004, she started something called the Biocon Foundation, which focuses on health, education, environmental sustainability, and intervention.

And she was placed 14th in the Hurun India

Philanthropy List 2019 for a $9 million donation and was ranked number two on their list of women philanthropists.

So she scores scores pretty highly there.

In 2015 she joined the Giving Pledge.

We've talked about this before on the podcast.

It's a charitable campaign founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

We've covered them both on this podcast and it encourages wealthy people to contribute a majority, in other words, at least half of their wealth to philanthropy.

And she's been giving away half her income on an annual basis because she says being brought up by her middle-class family in India taught her that wealth creation is about making a difference to society.

Okay, so she's rocketing up the philanthropy stakes with that, joining that giving pledge and those kind of thoughts.

She's established a 1400 bed cancer center in Bangalore, Bengaluru, in partnership with a heart surgeon in order to deliver affordable world-class cancer care to patients irrespective of socioeconomic status and class.

Yeah, I mean...

She's rocketing up the

estimations.

And this is a kind of sad conclusion to the romantic love story that we talked about in this episode, because sadly her husband passed away from cancer in 2022 and since then she's actually focused her efforts increasingly on trying to find a cure for cancer.

That is really a sad end to that rather lovely story but it's propelling her efforts to try and make strides in cancer cures.

She's scoring very highly here.

I'm going to give her, I mean, what did we give?

Chuck Feeney, we gave him a 10 because he gave away all his money.

We've given other people nines.

I think she's got to be worth an eight at least.

I think she's definitely worth an eight.

I mean, imagine if in a month's time she discovers the cure for cancer and people are like, why did you give this woman eight out of ten?

I know.

We might have to re-record this episode if that happens.

Okay, so two eights from us on philanthropy.

Power.

Interesting one.

India's first female self-made billionaire makes her quite a powerful figure.

I think if she picked up the phone to call any Indian politician, they would pick up.

Yeah, maybe any politician of any kind.

Because India's become a real

powerhouse for the production of medicine as well.

Yeah.

And if, you know, God forbid, the factories closed down, would people around the world be left without life-saving drugs?

Probably.

Yeah, there could be.

I remember, I think it was during COVID, there was a supply chain interruption of some drugs coming out of India, and it became a big issue.

It was a worldwide supply issue.

So I'd say she's...

Pretty powerful.

I mean, I think what she's set up is very powerful.

I think the figure she's become is unique.

So I'm going to give her a seven.

Yeah, I would give her a seven out of ten.

She's a really interesting figure.

I don't think if you went out to a person on the street, they would necessarily recognize her name, but they know what statins are.

They'll know what insulin is.

Yeah, that's for sure.

Okay, two sevens for that.

So let's think of legacy in terms of a trailblazer for female business people in India, particularly.

Yeah, definitely.

And also, I think an interesting case in someone who saw the sexism in one industry.

And although she let it discourage her from pursuing that particular job she actually turned that ambition focus into something that arguably did more for humanity I mean you know obviously beer does great things for humanity but you know I would argue probably insulin is probably a much bigger deal yeah I mean she didn't invent any of these things I mean she produced them so I wonder whether her legacy is best in the fact that she is this kind of much fated Indian businesswoman and I imagine if you are a young woman in Indian business, she's probably a pretty important person to you.

And also probably a pretty important person for women in STEM, you know, especially given the industry in science and technology is still pretty male-dominated.

Sure.

Okay.

I'm going to give her a six.

I'm going to rate her slightly higher, a seven, I think.

Okay.

I think basically the journey from using science and research from beer to medicine is so interesting.

Yeah, no, it's a fascinating story and quite an inspiring one.

I've really enjoyed learning more about her.

Okay, I'm going to bump her up to a seven as well.

You're so easily pursued.

You are so easily, easily led.

So good, bad, or just another billionaire?

I feel like, I mean,

just for the kind of inspiration she probably provides to Indian women, women in science, women in medicine alone, I think she just has to be a good billionaire.

She's good.

She's got a 1400-bed cancer care center, which takes in people regardless of how much money they have.

She's giving away over half her money in the giving pledge.

She's providing medicines to millions of people, statins which are probably saving people's lives.

I think there's no question in my mind that she's a good billionaire.

So Kieran Mazumda Shaw, you'll be pleased to hear that you're officially one of the very few good billionaires we've had.

Yep.

So who we got next week?

We have a man whose name might not be familiar to listeners, but whose product almost certainly will.

It's the founder and creator of TikTok Dang Yiming.

I've got to admit, I am not a TikTok native, but I will download the app during the program next week so I can familiarize myself with something that has been charged with draining the attention span of our youth.

So to find out more about Simon's journey through TikTok, tune in for the next episode.

Good Bad Billionaire is a BBC World Service podcast produced by Mark Ward with additional production by Emma Betteridge.

James Cook is the editor and it's a BBC Studios production for BBC World Service.

For the BBC World Service, the senior podcast producer is Kat Collins and the podcast commissioning editor is John Minnell.

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