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A refugee from
Pakistan, he bought this asset for Rs 2.5 lakh
And now sold it for Rs 9,576 cr
WSN Network
 Mumbai:
Of course he did make money for himself, but in the process the
image of a Sikh entrepreneur that Malvinder Mohan Singh has
propagated throughout the world by building up the Ranbaxy and now
selling it is something of a sewa.
When, on behalf of
his family, he gets the Rs 9576.29 crore booty from Japanese pharma
giant Daiichi Sankyo, he'll remember feisty grandfather Bhai Mohan
Singh's opportunistic act 56 years ago of buying a controlling stake
in Ranbaxy for a princely sum of Rs 2.5 lakh.
Bhai Mohan Singh,
who crossed the border from Pakistan with his wife and two sons in
1947, was an adept financier.
At the turn of the
1950s, he funded Gurbax Singh, a wily promoter of an entity called
Ranbaxy & Co, which owned a chemist's shop in Delhi and an agency
for A Shiniogi, another Japanese pharmaceutical company.
Gurbax owed Bhai
Mohan Rs 2.5 lakh, which, instead of repaying, he chose to give away
the promoter's stake to the financier in the 1950s, only to
profoundly regret the act. To regain control, Gurbax filed several
cases against Bhai Mohan, only to be outwitted by the financier at
every turn.
That's been one of
the hallmarks of the company ever since: dealing in lawsuits.
On Wednesday, when
Malvinder & Co sold their stake to Daiichi, the circle was complete,
as it were: a foray into the pharma world, in the middle of the
twentieth century, was enabled by a apanese firm that made vitamins
and anti-tuberculosis drugs.
It has ended with
another one from the Land of the Rising Sun.
The Japanese connect
came about because Gurbax knew Shiniogi.
But Japan in the
1940s was known to make cheap products and did not have the
reputation of the European pharma giants.
Eventually, Ranbaxy
began flirting with an Italian pharma company called Lepetit. During
this time, the Indian government changed laws, specifying that the
packaging of medicines should be done in India to help reduce costs
and for the cause of employment.
Ranbaxy was forced
to open its first plant in Okhla near Delhi.
Sometime later, the
two firms drifted apart with Bhai Mohan writing yet another cheque
—- for Rs 25 lakh to buy out Lepitit's stake.
During the
dalliance, Ranbaxy learnt to stand on its own.
Bhai Mohan's son
Parvinder entered the scene and with his close associate Sorab Desai
developed the company's first blockbuster: the sleep-inducing drug
Calmpose, a derivative of diazepam.
Calmpose helped
Ranbaxy cross a major milestone then —- Rs 1 crore annual sales by
1968.
But by the nineties,
it was almost as if Gurbax's curse was visiting Bhai Mohan: fissures
started between him and Parvinder, who outnumbered and outguessed
the father on the board, took control and took Ranbaxy to new
heights.
18
June,
2008
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