Samprada Singh, Chairman, Alkem Laboratories

HOW a young Patna University graduate with a simple family background became the head of a major pharmaceutical company in India is Samprada Singh’s unusual story. Mr Singh, founder and chairman of Alkem Laboratories, a Rs 750-crore pharma company, could probably say he owes his success to his initial misfortunes which he translated into success with entrepreneurial zeal and a positive mental attitude. Born and brought up in Bihar, he wanted to be a doctor. Since this dream could not be realised, he was compelled to explore other pastures. In 1946 he joined Gaya College, Patna University, to specialise in commerce. Once he obtained his graduate degree, Mr Singh thought he would, like his parents, become an agriculturist. However, successive droughts in Bihar constrained him to change his plans once again. In 1953, Mr Singh opened his first business, a small medical retail store in Patna. Seven years after opening the store Mr Singh felt it wasn’t enough. He started a business of pharmaceutical distribution in 1960 under the banner of Magadh Pharma. During these years he started establishing links with doctors and senior executives from major pharma companies. “My relationships with the medical profession as well as with pharma big bosses were excellent,” he explains. Once again, after a few years, Mr Singh started thinking about new ways to expand. Realising how limited were opportunities for the distribution business in Patna, he moved to Mumbai, where he decided to set up his own pharmaceutical company under the name Alkem Laboratories. The company’s beginning was not easy, admits Mr Singh. “There were many conflicts of power then in the industry and many did not wish to see me succeed,” he said. Besides, “The capital initially invested in the company was small, and the first years were financially quite difficult.” The company started its activities by focusing on anti-bacterials and NSAIDs, which at that time were prime therapeutic segments. Then came the turning point which catapulted Alkem into the big league. In 1989, Alkem successfully manufactured and marketed Taxim, a generic version of the antibiotic cefotaxime. Multinational Hoechst Marion Roussel (now Sanofi Aventis) was the innovators of the product and the company’s brand dominated the market at that time. “Aventis probably felt that a relatively small Indian company like ours may not pose them any threat but they were in for a big surprise. We surged way ahead of them,” said Mr Singh. The competitive prices offered by Alkem could not possibly be matched by the French company, which soon had to completely halt production. “Taxim really changed the whole profile of the company. It gave the company more visibility and a new credibility,” he told ET. Today, Alkem ranks No 7 in the domestic pharma industry and sells approximately 75m vials of Taxim per year, which probably represents more in terms of volume than any given molecule’s sales in the world. Taxim also accounts for around 15% of the company’s revenues. Taxim is, in fact, about to become the second Indian brand set to cross the Rs 100-crore sales mark. Over the years, marketing and finance became Alkem’s strengths. Alkem has a very strong track record of building brands. In fact, it is today a zero-debt company and 12 of the company’s brands feature among the top 300 pharma brands in India. Mr Singh mainly attributes the gro-wth of his company to his ability to create the best relations possible with his employees, associates and distributors. “Gaining people’s trust and commitment is one of the most important things to succeed. You have to make sure that all people you work with, whether they work within or with the company, are happy and you have to make them grow too as the company expands,” Mr Singh said. At 79 years, Mr Singh still has great plans for the company’s future. Not only is he about to open a division dedicated to nutraceuticals and food processing, but he also intends to make Alkem one of the top five Indian pharma companies within 2 years, primarily by increasing international presence, in addition to domestic consolidation. The target is set high at Rs 2,000-crore sales for ’10. But Mr Singh is confident. “That’s not a problem, it will be easy,” he concludes with a smile. Mr Singh’s life story epitomises the old English adage, “From tiny acorns grow mighty oaks.”

Sanjeev Srivastav-Assotech

Sanjeev Srivastva is a man on a mission. He doesn’t have the wherewithal yet to change the landscape of Bihar, the poor state where he hails from. But he is dreaming of changing the skyline of capital Patna with a new 5-star hotel. You can’t miss the glint in his eyes when he says his first hotel will come up next to Maurya, Patna’s lone big hotel which has stood the test of time while the state’s economy crumbled all around. “But Bihar is changing now. I want to be a part of it,” Srivastva adds. The 42- year-old founder and MD of real estate firm Assotech started out with civil contracting business after completing his B Tech in civil engineering from National Institute of Technology, Calicut in 1986. The traditional Bihari family wasn’t amused. They would have wanted him to become a civil servant likehis father. “But I never wanted to become a government servant. I always listened to my inner voice,” Srivastva says, recounting his journey as a businessman. Obtaining finance was near impossible for a young entrepreneur those days. So, Srivastva borrowed Rs 50,000 from friends. “I had to overcome many hurdles before getting the first contract of a vanaspati factory near Badayun,” he says. During that time, Srivastva executed a few road and bridge projects. The first big project came in 1992 when he developed a 40-mtr building in Noida. “That was when I made my first million,” he says. The road traversed was full of obstacles. With established players like Omaxe and Ansals around, survival was tough. “One needed strong influence to get even a small-size contract,” he explains. True. Srivastva’s firm began to bag many large projects including one for Kajaria Ceramics. His big moment came in 1997 when he got to develop a housing project near Noida. The move came
in when the state government started awarding infrastructure projects to smaller private players. By 2003, when the real estate sector began to pick up, Assotech bagged bigger projects. Today, he is building what’s so far the tallest residential building—at 121 mtr—in NCR. With an investment of Rs 250 crore, the building will come with a helipad and a glass-walled swimming pool on top—all designed to appeal to premium buyers. “We are creating an identity for Noida by developing this building, which should come up in about two years,” says Srivastva.

A Bihari Entrepreneur with a Pan-Russian Network

Hung proudly on the wall facing Sujit Kumar Singh's desk at Shreya House, Mumbai, is a picture of him talking to Vladimir Putin on the occasion of the Russian President's State visit last year. They're standing surrounded by luminaries from Indian industry and government, all smiling politely, but obviously excluded from the intimate conversation - because it's in Russian. Singh made a linguistic leap when he moved from Bihar to Russia twelve years ago, and English was one language he missed learning. But now that he's returned to set up base in India - Shreya acquired Rallis India's pharma division from the Tatas two years ago and more recently, it has taken over the domestic marketing division of Plethico Pharma. Singh went to study at the Kursk Medical University at the age of 18, along with 11 other Indian students. Singh had no background in business - his father was a school headmaster in a village near Patna - but he recognised the opportunity provided by chaos. Numerous Indian pharma companies had built their fortunes on exports to Russia and now they found themselves at sea, with no marketing infrastructure and no reliable distribution network to sell through. Singh's first major supplier was Cadila Laboratories. He met up with CEO Indravadan Modi in Moscow and struck a deal to sell the Ahmedabad-based company's products in the city region. By then, Singh had decided to quit medical school to concentrate on his fledgling business. The Shreya group's second major supplier was Ranbaxy and this was followed by other Indian companies like Dr Reddy's Laboratories, JB Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals and then transnational names like Aventis, GSK and Pfizer. By then, Singh had created a pan-Russia distribution network and had proved himself to be a reliable partner. Ganesh Nayak, executive director of Zydus Cadila, has worked with Singh for 12 years. He says: "He's ethical in his dealings and makes payments on time, which was an important factor in Russia those days. He may not be charismatic or articulate, but he's a hard working, astute businessman, in the right place at the right time." Today, the Shreya group turnover is $400 million, of which $340 million comes from Russia, making it the country's third largest pharma distributor. Singh has targeted a turnover of $750 million by 2005 and wants to turn Shreya into "a fully integrated pharma and bio-tech organisation." Two years ago, Singh pulled off quite a coup by acquiring Rallis India's pharma division from the Tatas, paying Rs 49 crore, financed equally through internal accruals and a loan from IDBI. The acquisition has finally given the group a manufacturing base in Aurangabad, India and in Harare, Zimbabwe. Singh's second acquisition, the Rs 85 crore buy-out of the domestic prescription drug division of the Indore based Plethico Pharma earlier this year, has more than doubled Shreya's field force. This year, the Mumbai headquartered Shreya Life Sciences expects to generate a Rs 300 crore turnover, of which Rs 180 crore will be domestic, and the rest through exports to the parent company in Russia. Coming up next is a Rs 60 crore greenfield project in Pune's Biotech Park, in league with SciGen Inc of the USA, which will make the hepatitis B vaccine and human insulin.