Indian businessman Dilip Shanghvi is one of the wealthiest people in India. He started Sun Pharmaceuticals and is now its managing director. Sun Pharmaceuticals is a multinational company that makes medicines. It is the biggest company in India that sells long-term prescription drugs. It has formulations for psychiatry, neurology, gastroenterology, cardiology, and diabetes. Shanghvi was born in a small town to a drug wholesaler. He went to the University of Calcutta and got a bachelor’s degree in commerce. As a young man, he helped his father run a business that sold generic drugs wholesale. One day, he had the idea to start his own business making drugs. Even though he didn’t go to school for science, he started Sun Pharmaceutical Industries with a marketing team of two people and five products. After starting out small, he worked hard to grow his business, and within a few years, he was sending his products to countries nearby. He soon started buying up other businesses, which helped him grow his business by a huge amount. He bought companies like Caraco Pharma in the United States and Taro Pharma in Israel. He bought Ranbaxy in 2014, which made Sun Pharmaceuticals the biggest drug company in India and the fifth-biggest specialty generic company in the world. Mukesh Ambani was the richest person in India until he passed him in 2015.
Early years and childhood
Dilip Shanghvi was born in Amreli, a small town in Gujarat, India, on October 1, 1955. His parents were Shantilal N. Shanghvi and Kumud. His father sold drugs in large quantities.
He went to J. J. Ajmera High School and then Bhawanipur Education Society College, where he earned his degree. Then, he went to the University of Calcutta and got a Bachelor of Commerce.
Dilip Shanghvi’s Career
After he finished school, he went to work as a drug distributor for his father’s business selling generic drugs in bulk in Kolkata. During this time, he came up with the idea of starting his own company to make drugs.
In 1982, he started Sun Pharmaceutical Industries in Vapi, Gujarat, with Rs. 10,000 that his father gave him. The business started out with a marketing team of just two people and a small factory that made only five psychiatry products.
Shanghvi and his team worked hard to grow the business a little at a time. By the early 1990s, the company had its own research and manufacturing facilities. There were also new product lines in the fields of cardiology and gastroenterology.
By the beginning of the 1990s, the company was also sending goods to countries close by. The company went public in 1994.
Shanghvi kept the company growing quickly while he was in charge. He was a smart businessman who used a wide range of acquisitions to grow the company. In 1996, he bought his first business, a drug plant made by Knoll Pharma in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra. At this point, he had also made it possible for the company to do business in 24 countries.
In the 1990s, when Indian pharmaceuticals were in fierce competition with multinational drug companies, Shanghvi focused his efforts on making a portfolio of niche generic drugs and specialty and long-term therapies in areas like psychiatry, cardiology, neurology, oncology, and dermatology. This strategy worked, and his company grew very quickly over the next ten years.
In 1997, Sun Pharma made its first international purchase when it bought Caraco Pharmaceutical Laboratories, a company in Detroit that was losing money. Sun did this to expand its business in the United States. Around the same time, it also bought shares in two well-known drug companies in India, Tamilnadu Dadha Pharmaceuticals and MJ Pharmaceuticals.
After buying Caraco, Shanghvi was able to grow his business in the US, so he kept doing more acquisitions and grew his business very quickly. He bought more than a dozen companies and brands between 1999 and 2012.
In 2007, he started the process to buy Israel’s Taro Pharmaceutical Industries. After a three-year battle, he was finally able to buy it in 2010. With this purchase, Sun Pharma’s sales in the US grew to more than $1 billion, which is almost twice as much as before.
As the company went global, it also had to deal with some problems. In March 2014, the US Food and Drug Administration stopped importing from Sun Pharma’s factory in Karkhadi, Gujarat, because the factory did not make good products. Sun Pharma recalled 68,000 bottles of its antidepressant drug from the US in the same year because they did not pass a quality test.
The smart businessman didn’t let the problems with the event stop him from making a big purchase in 2014. Sun Pharma paid $4 billion to Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo Co. to buy Ranbaxy Laboratories, a competitor that makes generic drugs. This made Sun Pharma the largest pharmaceutical company in India and the fifth-largest specialty generics company in the world.
Works of note
Dilip Shanghvi started the Indian multinational pharmaceutical company Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Limited. Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Limited is the largest company in India that sells long-term prescription drugs.
It is also the biggest Indian pharmaceutical company in the US and the fifth-biggest specialty generic company in the world.
Awards & Achievements
In 2011, he was given the “CNN-IBN Indian of the Year” award for business.
In 2016, the Indian government gave Dilip Shanghvi the Padma Shri, which is the fourth highest civilian award in the country.
Personal History and Legacies
He is married to Vibha, and the two of them have two kids: Aalok and Vidhi.
Estimated Net Worth
Dilip Shanghvi is worth about US$ 17.5 billion, according to estimates.