Kiran Mazumdar Shaw stresses strategic significance of Peter Bains' appointment as Biocon group CEO

And of course, because we all are basically rooted into deep science and technology, we have great capabilities that can be leveraged each other — whether it's R&D, manufacturing technologies, and now of course, the commercial opportunity — that also can be synergised. So that is what it's all about and we will get into this discussion in greater depth, but I hope I provided you with the right reason for why we did this.

Bains: Let me first say, very happy to be rejoining Biocon. As Kiran has outlined, at such an exciting stage in the group's evolution with all three of the principal business verticals poised for periods of very dynamic growth, I really build on what she said. The businesses, while having discrete opportunities, have a lot of commonalities and complementarities that run right from the beginning point of science and technologies that are employed through manufacturing and processes, and to the ways in which the organisation's work progresses to the marketplace, all are in commonalities.  For example, in therapeutic areas in focus, like diabetes, oncology and immunology.

So, I think I can hit the ground running. I am quite familiar with the group's operations and very familiar with the business CEOs who I am looking forward to working with to evolve and optimise strategy to ensure that we can maximise the business potential. So that all the businesses have and create and capture value right across the group, stakeholders and shareholders.

Bains: First of all, it will be to work with the CEOs on strategies, on refining and evolving strategy on determining where the levers are to optimise and maximise synergies and complementarities. And also to ensure that it delivers the potential realisation at all levels into these businesses across the group. These themes will play through immediately in the mid-term and the long term.

Mazumdar Shaw: I think CEOs will have autonomy at the business level for sure. As you know, Peter will be reporting directly to me and to the board of Biocon. And obviously, we will look at group synergies. So, wherever there are group synergies which need to be delivered in leverage, that is where we will work with the CEOs to ensure that it is executed at their individual business levels. But when it comes to individual CEOs, certainly they are autonomous, they can run their businesses independently and do what is right for their individual businesses. But we seriously believe that there are synergies between these businesses, for example, if you look at the capacities that we have created across the group, there will be an opportunity to utilise idle capacity across the group, which we are not doing very effectively at this point in time.

Mazumdar Shaw: Certainly not, this is a strategic responsibility. Peter, as I mentioned, comes with a lot of experience and familiarity in terms of the Biocon group operations and its strategy, and this is a way to make sure that in the next few years, we focus on that strategy. Right now, each one of the individual businesses is focused on their own growth prospects and their own growth strategies, but we believe we are missing the group synergy strategy, which Peter will deliver.

Mazumdar Shaw: I don't think we can guide on any of these questions because it is too early. I mean, we brought in Peter to look at strategy, and we can't be telling you upfront what that strategy is because it has to evolve over at least six months for sure. So, there is no way we can guide on such matters. But needless to say, that each one of our businesses is something very special, very unique. As I mentioned, each one of them is poised at a very high growth inflection point. I think we should leave it to individual CEOs to also play a very important role in guiding for all this. So, I don't think we at this point in time can answer such questions. I think you have to basically understand that we need to demonstrate the synergies that we can deliver across the group and that is what we will be focusing on. There are a lot of synergies that are not yet being addressed across the group and we want to address them.

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