For him, Ranbaxy was fourth child

BHAI MOHAN SINGH (1915-2006)

It is unlikely that Bhai Mohan Singh's business acumen will ever be taught in business schools, though academics will find it hard to ignore the global aspirations of the company he nurtured for over three decades, Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd.

In his time, Bhai Mohan Singh, who died on March 27, aged 89, was a master of his craft. Those were pre-liberalisation days, the age of the licence-permit-quota raj, and he was its foremost practitioner. Nobody knew better than Bhai Mohan Singh how the regime could be worked to grow one's business.

Born to a hindu father, Bhai Gyan Chand, and a sikh mother, Sunder dai, Bhai Mohan Singh made his first fortune during the Second World War when his firm bagged a contract to build roads in the North East. The Japanese were advancing fast through Burma and the British wanted the roads ready in double quick time.

After Partition, he relocated from Rawalpindi and settled down in New Delhi.

He was in the money lending business and soon acquired a company called Ranbaxy (started by cousins Ranjit Singh and Gurbax Singh) after a loan default.

After surviving two takeover attempts "" first by Gurbax Singh in the 1950s and then by lepetit of Italy in the 1960s "", Bhai Mohan Singh made a mark in the pharmaceuticals industry in the late 1960s when he launched his first superbrand, Calmpose.

Calmpose was a copy of Roche's valium. But Roche had not bothered to get it patented in India. Bhai Mohan Singh then located a company in the Eastern Bloc (which didn't recognise patents) who was willing to supply him the drug.

When India shifted to a regime of process patens in the early 1970s, Bhai Mohan Singh was the first to realise that one could make any product in the world through reverse engineering. His R&D facility at Mohali was the first in the country to focus on process technologies. This helped Ranbaxy launch one blockbuster after the other "" Roscillin, Cifran etc.

But, by the early 1990s, it was clear that patent laws would change in the near futue and globalisation could no longer be avoided. The business economics was changing rapidly beyond Bhai Mohan Singh's comprehension. He had outlived his utility and walked into a vacuum.

Parvinder Singh, Bhai Mohan Singh's first and favourite son, started trusting professionals more than Bhai Mohan Singh would have liked. In a family split a few years ago, he had given the crown jewel of his business, Ranbaxy, to Parvinder; so the hurt was more.

There was a bitter boardroom battle between father and son, which Bhai Mohan Singh lost in1993.That broke his spirit. In his heydays, Bhai Mohan Singh would often tell his friends that he had four children "" Parvinder, Manjit, Analjit and Ranbaxy. The ouster took a heavy toll on him. He slowly faded away from the limelght. The end on Monday closed the chapter forever.