For Rajiv Modi, science and spirituality complement growth and market share, which may be why the second-gen chairman and managing director of Cadila Pharmaceuticals has stayed away from Dalal Street. The maverick entrepreneur opened up to Forbes India, after more than a decade of media silence, on innovation, devotion and enterprise
About 50 km from Ahmedabad city, on Transad village road in Dholka, we enter Cadila Pharma’s oldest formulations plant that was built in 1998. Spread across 100 acres, it recently got US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for the second time after the first one in 2013. The factory was the birthplace of various key pharmaceutical innovations like Sepsivac, an immunotherapy treatment for sepsis, and employs 2,200 people at present.
The company generates a major chunk of business from formulations. It has more than 850 products in several forms belonging to 45 therapeutic segments and 12 specialties, including cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, analgesics, haematinics, anti-infectives, antibiotics, and more. The formulation business fulfils the need for domestic, regulated, and rest-of-the-world markets. Apart from Dholka, Cadila also has formulation manufacturing facilities in Jammu and Kashmir and Ethiopia.
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“I’m pretty much clear that Cadila is not going public. Our bottom line has not been the greatest, but we put money back. And give back to my parents; they started the company to do good [to others]. For me, that’s really relevant. I hope my son also carries that.”