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.