The Sun Shines Brightly

Even though he belongs to the low-glamour generic pharma industry, Dilip Shanghvi has forced his way into India's pantheon of exceptionally gifted and successful entrepreneurs. From a plain B.Com graduate who set up a drug manufacturing plant with no prior experience, Shanghvi's Sun Pharma today manufactures drugs which only a handful of MNCs manufactured and others were reluctant to make. Starting with an investment of Rs 10,000 in 1983, Sun Pharma's market cap is now about ₹1.74 lakh crores.

Dilip Shanghvi who, by all accounts, lives a simple life in Mumbai, has built an incredible track record in these three decades. Along the way, he has proven his vision, his mastery in the art of corporate turnarounds and his management skills. These have propelled Sun Pharma to be among the fastest-growing generic maker in the US market and easily the most profitable in India. As Sanghvi takes advantages of size and heft to implement larger and larger acquisitions, the acceleration in Sun Pharma's revenues gets breathtaking. It took 28 years for Sun to reach the $1 billion revenue mark, which it did in 2010. Then a mere two more years to touch $2 billion and another two to double it further to $4 billion in 2014. It is now the fifth-largest generic drugmaker in the world.

In recent years, the core of Shanghvi's strategy has been to concentrate on acquiring and turning around financially struggling drugmakers. When he acquired Caraco, a US-based company, it was a loss making company with revenues of less than $1 million. Today it's a profitable company with revenues more than $150 million dollars. Taro Pharma , an Israeli company, being another successful turnaround story, and one which now contributes heavily to Sun Pharma's financial performance. Sun has also recently acquired Ranbaxy for $3.2 billion, if approvals go through, it will have combined sales of ₹24,000 crore. Given Shanghvi's track record, a turnaround at the troubled Ranbaxy is more than likely, and could propel the drugmaker to an assailable number one in the industry. For shareholders, Sun has been an awesome wealth-creation machine. The accompanying table graph the detailed story of how shareholders' investments have grown since the company's IPO in 1994.