Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

Kiran trained as a brewmaster in Australia, but when she came back to India in the 1970s, no brewery would hire a woman. So in 1978 she started her own company in a garage in Bengaluru with only ₹10,000 and a small enzymes deal.

Slowly she turned it into Biocon, India's biggest biotechnology company — making affordable insulin and cancer medicines for millions of patients around the world.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (born 1953 in Bangalore) studied zoology at Bangalore University and became a Master Brewer at Ballarat College, Australia. Unable to get a brewer's job in India because she was a woman, she partnered with Ireland's Biocon Biochemicals in 1978 to start Biocon India, initially producing enzymes from a garage in Bengaluru with ₹10,000 in capital.

Over four decades she built Biocon into India's largest biopharmaceutical company, focused on affordable insulin (Insugen), biosimilar cancer therapies (trastuzumab), immunosuppressants and, more recently, novel biologics. Biocon's IPO in 2004 made her India's richest self-made woman.

She founded the Mazumdar Shaw Medical Foundation and cancer centre in Bengaluru. She has received the Padma Shri (1989), Padma Bhushan (2005), the Othmer Gold Medal (2014) and was named to Time's 100 Most Influential People.