They could not be more different. When he dethroned Mukesh Ambani last week to become India’s richest man — and the world’s wealthiest drugs maker — Dilip Shanghvi seemed eager to avoid the limelight. Perhaps the 59-year-old founder of Sun Pharmaceuticals, whose fortune is an estimated £14.3 billion, was too busy dealing with his latest acquisition — the opiates business of Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline — to worry about his net worth outstripping Mr Ambani’s £13.3 billion stake in Reliance Industries.
While Mr Ambani is the archetypal flashy Indian billionaire, living it up in Antilia, his 27-storey, billion-dollar mansion that glows at night over south Mumbai, Mr Shanghvi is anything but, shuttling between his non-descript blue glass office in Andheri, a bland suburb near Mumbai’s airport, and his home near by. He carries his own lunch box to work, while his wife Vibha sometimes takes an auto rickshaw to the local market. Among their few indulgences: a taste for sugary treats from their native Gujarat.
Still, Dilipbhai, as he is known in Mumbai business circles — an affectionate term that translates roughly as “Big Brother Dilip” — is the one to watch. Unlike Mr Ambani, who inherited his family’s refining and petrochemicals business, Mr Shanghvi is a self-made man, a diligent professional who has built one of the world’s biggest generic pharmaceuticals businesses from a £100 loan borrowed from his father in 1983. Aged 27 and fresh out of Calcutta University, he used the cash to hire two salesmen to help to hawk a portfolio of five psychiatry drugs. Today, after a string of shrewd acquisitions, Sun Pharma is a global empire generating 72 per cent of its revenues overseas, mostly in the United States. The company has 16,000 employees, 26 factories producing more than 1,000 different drugs and a market value of £21.8 billion. Mr Shanghvi owns 61 per cent of the shares, which were listed in 1994 and have surged in value by 22 per cent in the past three months alone.
Some tycoons might be satisfied with those achievements, but not Mr Shanghvi, a natural-born dealmaker with an eye for a bargain. Last year, his profile soared when he bought Ranbaxy Laboratories, a troubled rival, from Daiichi Sankyo, of Japan, for $3.2 billion — a deal that raised eyebrows because American regulators had flagged concerns about the group’s quality control standards. Ranbaxy was viewed by many as a basket case, although there are signs that Sun is turning it around.
A few months ago, he sprang another surprise, branching out into India’s burgeoning renewable energy industry by snapping up a 23 per cent stake in Suzlon, the world’s fifth-biggest manufacturer of wind turbines. Cash-rich from his stake in Sun, other investments have been poured into financial services and power stations.
Advertisement
Mr Shanghvi’s modest approach is illustrated by the fact that he is not even the chairman of his own company. In a highly unusual structure for a family controlled Indian business, that title belongs to Israel Makov, an executive from Taro Pharma, an Israeli company that Sun acquired in 2010.
That said, Mr Shanghvi is grooming his Harvard-educated son Alok to take over the family business. In a sign of the family’s influence, Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister and a fellow Gujarati, attended Shanghvi Jr’s wedding in Mumbai a few years ago — proof, perhaps, that while Dilipbhai may be known for his personal modesty and conservatism, he is an accomplished networker. That may help to explain why Sun Pharma — and its owner — are likely to continue to prosper for years to come.
Robin Pagnamenta is South Asia Correspondent of The Times