AGENTS OF CHANGE: DR. KALLAM ANJI REDDY

Till the year 1984, when Dr. Kallam Anji Reddy founded Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, India was import dependent for its drug requirements. Today, the Indian pharmaceutical companies are exporting drugs to countries across the globe. Dr. Anji Reddy has not been a mere witness or beneficiary of this trend, but among those who drove this transformation.

He is regarded as a trendsetter in the field of drug discovery which was initially considered the forte of large multinational companies. It was Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, which became the first Indian company to produce an anti-diabetic molecule and sell it to Novo Nordisk A/S, world’s leading manufacturer and marketer of pharmaceutical products and services specializing in diabetes care.

Dr. Reddy’s was the first company to take up drug discovery research in India in 1993. If the Indian pharmaceuticals industry is now being recognised globally for ‘Innovation’ instead of being dubbed as ‘copycats’, credit goes to Dr. Anji Reddy’s entrepreneurial initiative. This transformation has created a number of multinational pharmaceutical companies headquartered in India.

He started his career by working in Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Limited, a public sector unit (PSU) from 1969 – 1975. He also served as Managing Director of Uniloids Ltd, the company which produced Metronidazole, an anti-amoebic (1976-80) and Standard Organics Limited, a company which deals with intermediates and pharmaceutical products (1980-84). During his tenure at these companies, he focused on production of a number of bulk pharmaceuticals in the country, as India was net importer of bulk drugs in those days.

In 1984, he founded Dr. Reddy's Laboratories with a capital of $40,000 in cash and bank loan of $120,000. Within two years, Dr. Reddy’s Labs successfully penetrated the international market with a sophisticated drug called Methyldopa in 1986. In 1993, Dr. Reddy's became the first company to take up drug discovery research in India. In April 2001 it became the first non-Japanese Asian pharmaceutical company to list on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The company with revenue of $546 million (Rs.2,427 crore) during the fiscal year 2006, is India’s second largest pharmaceutical company.