Biography Of ‘Medicine Mogul’ Dilip Shanghvi, The Founder Of Sun Pharma, To Hit Stores Soon

The first-ever biography of Sun Pharmaceutical’s founder Dilip Shanghvi, authored by journalist-author Soma Das, will be published by Penguin Random House in June this year.

The biography titled “The Reluctant Billionaire: How Dilip Shanghvi became the richest self-made Indian’ is the untold human story of an enterprise and its creator.

The book is based on interviews with over 150 friends, family members, rivals, former aides, and Dilip Shanghvi himself.

In the book, Das dwells on the journey of ‘Medicine Mogul’ Shanghvi, from working in his father’s small medicine shop in the bylanes of Dawa Bazaar in Kolkata to building India’s largest pharma company—Sun Pharma.

“Dilip Shanghvi is one of the most interesting and least understood business minds of India today. For someone, unschooled in degrees of sciences and management who worked his way up from a tiny wholesale shop in the bylanes of Dawa Bazaar in Calcutta of the 1970s to create one of the country’s most valuable enterprises and become the richest self-made Indian in 2015, he is also one of the least studied capitalists. Until now, his journey has been shrouded in mystery partly because of his unwillingness to share it. This narrative attempts to change that,” author Das said in a media statement.

The book is an attempt to understand the fiercely intense personality behind Shanghvi’s calm demeanour and tell the tale of his enterprise — Sun Pharma, said Das.

“Now, it is for the first time people will get a candid look at the seasoned entrepreneur’s life”, Lohit Jagwani, commissioning editor of Penguin Random House Media, said in a statement.

Shanghvi, a son of a pharmaceuticals distributor, started Sun in 1983 to make psychiatric drugs. The company is the world’s fourth-largest speciality generics maker and India’s largest pharma company with revenue worth $3.6 billion, as of March 2018, according to Forbes. His current worth is $7.5 billion.

Also known as the ‘Takeover Tycoon,’ Shanghvi grew Sun through a series of acquisitions, the biggest of which was the 2014 acquisition of Ranbaxy Laboratories, for $4 billion, Forbes added.

The pharma company’s shares were hit early this year after a whistleblower reported alleged corporate governance lapses to the market regulator, Sebi. – CNBC TV18