India Inc. by Vikas Pota

Author:Vikas Pota
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey Publishing
Published: 2010-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Charity

This enthusiasm and passion spill over into other areas of life. In 2005, Mazumdar-Shaw set up the Biocon Foundation to identify and implement projects that will influence India’s social and economic situation. Its main focus areas are providing quality healthcare and health education for the betterment of Indian society.

Arogya Raksha Yojana (Disease Protection Project) was the first step taken by her charity in this direction. Through this initiative, the foundation provides high-quality drugs at affordable prices to the masses at all BioCare Pharmacies and participating clinics. Working alongside Dr. Devi Shetty, the founder of a unique rural health scheme, this first-of-its-kind initiative has been growing exponentially. Mazumdar-Shaw explains:

“This is a very interesting model we are trying to create of micro health insurance. Health insurance is normally aimed at affluent urban people. Ignoring rural people who form such a big part of the Indian population will cause huge problems in the long run. The objective of Arogya Raksha Yojana is to provide quality healthcare at a reasonable cost to those very masses and root out indebtedness to moneylenders.”

Besides healthcare, education is the other cause closest to her heart. In 2006, the Biocon Foundation unveiled a unique mathematics self-help book for primary schools, in collaboration with Macmillan India Limited. The book aims to make mathematics fun for children. She says:

“Biocon Foundation has a strong commitment to promoting education, especially among underprivileged children. We believe an excitement for math, if encouraged at an early age, will go a long way in helping students cope with challenges on the subject in later years.”

Mazumdar-Shaw has also been India’s ambassador for biotechnology, a role she decided to pursue aggressively at a time when India was not known for biotech. She is the Chairperson of Karnataka’s Vision Group on Biotechnology, a Member of the Advisory Council of the Indian Government’s Department of Biotechnology, and Vice-President of the Association of Women Entrepreneurs of Karnataka (AWAKE). At the helm of various conferences and delegations, her aim has been to highlight the possibilities that biotech offers to a country like India:

“I have made a lot of time to address certain key issues. India wasn’t really known for biotechnology, so I felt that if I can in some way build a brand for India, it would be very fulfilling.”

Another subject about which she feels extremely passionately is the state of the city that has been her home for years. She is behind a number of initiatives to improve what she describes as a “crumbling” city, but has found it quite a frustrating struggle:

“It really concerns me that a city like Bangalore is breaking down because the government is not doing enough. People in India tend to be really apathetic. I decided to get together with some like-minded people to shake things out of that apathy. There is a huge disconnect between the public and private sector. The latter has zoomed ahead in a world of its own and things in the public sector have not quite kept pace. I sometimes really

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