Meet Intas' Chudgars who silently made to the top

The company is the largest privately held pharmaceutical company in India with an annual turnover of $1 billion

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Octogenarian Hasmukh  K Chudgar, who ranks 66th on the Forbes India 100 Richest People list this year with a networth of $1.87 billion, has slowly and silently made his way amongst the country’s pharma billionaires. Since he started his firm around 1976-77, H K Chudgar has chosen to maintain a low profile.

When he passed on the baton to his three sons Binish and Nimish and Urmish in the early nineties, the next generation at the helm too followed their father’s footsteps and have chosen to stay away from the limelight.

At 83 though HK regularly visits the Ahmedabad facility of the pharma major at Bavla (at least once a week) and frequents the company headquarters in the city too, say insiders. People close to the family claim that they lead a relatively simple life, nothing close to anything of exuberant luxury.

At work too, their roles are well cut out; while Binish mostly runs the show (as the vice-chairman and managing director of the firm), his brother Nimish is in charge of operations. He brings on the table a  hands-on knowledge of manufacturing and running the company’s domestic operations.

In addition, their other brother, Urmish Chudgar, who himself is a haematologist-oncologist, helps identifying the unmet medical need perspective to the company. He also heads the biopharma arm.

A commerce graduate from Gujarat University and MBA from S P Jain Management School, Mumbai, it was Binish who constantly pushed for tapping into the global markets early. Around 1996, he set up a plant in Ahmedabad and it was around 2001 that Intas started exporting to Europe.

Today, Intas is among the top 10 Indian pharmaceutical companies which draws 60 per cent of its annual revenues from international operations.

Intas is also the largest privately held pharmaceutical company in India with an annual turnover of $1 billion.

Binish has also been the one who spearheaded the company’s biologics strategy, which so far, has worked well for Intas. Intas has the largest commercialised portfolio of biosimilars in India and is the first Indian pharmaceutical company to launch a biosimilar in the EU.

Insiders say that he also played a key role in forging the relationship with the two investors Temasek and ChrysCapital. “The company had plans to go for a listing around 2014 and as everyone knows they had also filed a DRHP and received a nod from Sebi.

But once the sluggish market conditions kept them away from listing, it was Binish who convinced the investors to stay on,” said one person close to the developments. He had plans to make a big-ticket acquisition either in the US or the EU, and had managed to convince the investors to keep rooted till that time.