Ranbaxy sold to Daiichi Sankyo, Malvinder Singh is on to other things — art, photography and Ranbaxy, of course.
Journalists, like most people, are only human, so I’m bursting with curiosity when I meet Ranbaxy CEO Malvinder Singh, who recently sold his company to Japanese major Daiichi Sankyo for Rs 10,000 crore. What, I ask him, is he going to do with all that cash in his kitty?
Setting up a meeting with him hasn’t been easy, but when he finally shakes hands early one morning in his gated farmhouse on the outskirts of Delhi, Singh is already in corporate mode. His smile is short, his face a mask. “Nothing,” he says crisply, “changes.”
Really? “I don’t know why everybody is making a big deal out of this money. It was always there,” he waves a weary hand, “locked up.” We’re seated in the visitors lounge, and so far Singh hasn’t shown much enthusiasm — everyone, after all, has been asking him the same question. His answer too has been unwaveringly polite but vague.
But he shrugs off his inertia when I want to shoot some pictures. Suddenly, he’s enthusiastic, but that’s because Singh is himself a hobby shutterbug. “I like to photograph my family,” he confesses.
“I keep it simple and the cameras come handy when I travel,” adding that he still uses the classic Nikon FM10 and FM2 film cameras for the purpose.
But Singh’s biggest passion — and it is apparent everywhere — is art. Even my untrained eye can spot an Anjolie Ela Menon canvas in the background. Design too plays a significant role in the way Singh likes to live.
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An art fund then, due to launch soon, is significant given his personal interest. “Oh yes,” he says, “I have started an art fund, and we have asked SEBI for regulations. It’s like a mutual fund and makes sure that people are able to engage in art in a much larger manner, transparently.”
He pauses, then adds, “I think there is clearly a need from the artist level to the gallery and eventually to sales to reduce opacity.”
He’s travelled a long way since his father, Ranbaxy’s Parvinder Singh, would restrict his college allowance to Rs 250. It was his first experience with finance, juggling the very finite sum to pay for petrol as well as for eating out at his favourite Sagar or Nirula’s.
But that lesson in austerity was to prove useful when he had to stay as a paying guest at his first job — American Express in Mumbai. “We had a palatial house in Mumbai but dad, a disciplinarian, wanted us to value everything. I had to work my way up even though I came from a well-to-do family,” he recalls.
A short stint at Merrill Lynch in Singapore followed, and then Singh was off to the US for his MBA. His time in America, when India was just opening up to the world, was peppered with explaining the Indian rope trick. “They had not realised how developed India was,” he laughs. “I got many questions.”
Ranbaxy was built ground-up by two generations of Singhs, and Malvinder had to work his way up right from the bottom rung. His first stint with his company was as a trainee in 1994, and the big plunge followed in 1998 as junior manager.
He ached up the ladder for six years, which he says taught him the distinction between ownership and management. “It was up to me to engage and get into the system. People have questions that you are the owner’s son, but you have to overcome that.”
In 2003, he rose to head Ranbaxy’s Indian operations at the age of 31. At the time the company needed a dose of energy and it came in the form of acquiring Romanian company Advent. It was Singh’s first and the company’s biggest ever acquisition at $324 million.
“There were two large companies on sale and the buyers were the same and equally interested in both. There we were, all of us cramped in one hotel — bankers and lawyers and pharma people — spying on each other. Possibly the rooms were bugged. It was like a Hindi movie. But we stayed low-key and figured out exactly what Advent wanted. We were not the highest bidder, but we understood the dynamics at play,” he says, adding as a footnote: “I could not sleep after the signing because of the excitement.”
His grip at the helm of Ranbaxy grew as CEO in 2006, but Singh will be remembered more for the recent sellout of the family stake to Daiichi Sankyo. The decision caused a stir across India Inc, which has been buying out rather than selling companies. Put bluntly, was Singh diluting the vision of two generations in one sweep?
“My father’s mission was a research-based global pharmaceutical company, it was never family domination,” explains Singh.
“He would have done what is in the best interests of the company, and this is what I have done. It’s not a sellout. I don’t get swayed by opinions or emotions, I take my own call,” he puts an end to the debate.
For now, he’s holding his cards close to his chest. Religare, his financial services firm, and Fortis, the healthcare services provider that his younger brother Shivinder heads, will definitely get a burst of financial adrenaline.
But “I am very much in Ranbaxy” he says of his role. In any case, why would he want to leave? The Daiichi Sankyo takeover, after all, has gained him an annual pay hike of Rs 25 crore.