Fair treatment: Dharmesh Shah

It was a chance meeting with the parents of a critically ill boy that motivated Dharmesh Shah to change the lives of thousands of cancer sufferers. It wasn’t the first time the chairman and managing director of BDR Pharmaceuticals International had focused on helping others with serious disease; the gold-medallist chemical engineer from Mumbai University had also been instrumental in providing access to crucial HIV drugs. 

It was the 90s and the spread of HIV and AIDS was decimating vulnerable populations in developing countries, with combative drugs unaffordable due to the monopoly of multinationals.

Dharmesh was the director for business development at Hetero Drugs, a company pioneering the development and marketing of cheaper generic drugs. Using his sharp business acumen, he catapulted the company into becoming the leading producer of cheap, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for anti-retrovirals, exporting to Latin America,
the Middle East, Sub-Sahara and Africa, and helping countless lives of HIV-infected adults and children.  

In 2003, and still a shareholder of Hetero, Dharmesh resigned to launch BDR Pharmaceuticals International as a predominately merchant trading entity. However, a devastating cancer diagnosis for his father led him into another world of despair and frustration as he realised that, once again, money was preventing thousands of Indian families from getting access to vital drugs. He met one such family while waiting for his father to finish a round of chemotherapy at a cancer treatment centre. "I will never forget that family," he remembers.

"The father was a taxi driver and the mother worked for an insurance company. They had lost everything — their house, their business, their jobs — to find the money to pay for the treatment of their little boy. They probably even knew it was going to be futile, but what do you do? You try everything to save your loved one. Ultimately, though, on top of the worry they had for their son, they were ruined financially."

A battle to provide cheaper HIV drugs

Dharmesh explains how 1 simple injection, required daily to relieve the dry mouth suffered by cancer patients after chemotherapy damages the salivary glands, costs US$2,000. "My father had 30 injections over 30 days, and we were very fortunate because we could afford it," Dharmesh says. "But so many can’t, and dry mouth is a common and distressing problem for all chemo patients. "So I worked on a molecule and found that the same molecule contained in that US$2,000 injection could be delivered for less than US$10 an injection. This was an eye-opener, and I decided something had to be done. My vision was very clear: to look at another life-threatening disease, cancer, and make the drugs affordable and accessible to everyone." 

After his battle to provide cheaper HIV drugs, Dharmesh was fully aware of the minefield he was entering. There were patent challenges, inflexible bureaucratic systems, and an oncology industry that lay mostly in the hands of multinational companies. By any means, it was a marathon task in itself, even for a person like Dharmesh who had been a witness himself to many challenges throughout his long journey of more than 3 decades.

Luckily, however, for him, his wife Binita stood by him like a pillar of strength and encouraged him in every step and decision he took. Throughout the process, she did not allow him to melt down. "We needed to do something to help the masses get hold of medicines that were unavailable to them. We knew it was not going to be easy to break into this market, let alone survive, but we had a very clear goal and we decided to go for it," says Dharmesh.

"There is a revolution in India and around the world, which does not mean this disease will be cured, but it does mean that people will live longer with it." 

Long-term commitment

While he believed in himself as a competent technocrat, Dharmesh needed to build a competent scientific team — like-minded individuals who not only understood his dream, but would commit long term. 

"I had to launch a talent hunt," he says. "It was like conceiving a dream with the philosophy of spending peanuts to buy diamonds. But, having been in the pharmaceutical industry since 1985, I was in touch with most of the top companies and key professionals around the world. We started modestly with a handful of staff.

Gradually, we have been picking up talented people to fill in all of the critical departments, such as marketing, finance, logistics, supply chain, secretarial and so on who have specialisation in their respective fields and backed by hands-on experience. I can proudly say that those boys who joined me in 2003 are still with me today, having grown enormously with our organisation in terms of their knowledge and achievements." Today BDR has swelled to a workforce of 800, an office in Dubai, and subsidiaries in Vietnam and Latin America. Over the next 3 years, Dharmesh plans to invest US$150 million to nearly double that workforce and further expand his markets.

"We are in the process of setting up a new world-class research and development centre in Baroda with at least 500 scientists working there.  We are also launching 3 new state-of-the art manufacturing facilities that will enable us to enter the regulated markets in the US, Europe, Japan and Australia. And during the next 18 months we are planning to increase our presence in ethical marketing — in neurology, dermatology and gynaecology. It’s going to be a massive 36 months ahead for us."

Although BDR has witnessed huge expansion over the past decade, the  family of Dharmesh has stayed at the heart of BDR with Binita running HR,  son Raheel the development director,  another son Dheer the CFO, and cousin  Tejash a director. The nucleus of the   culture remains firmly rooted with the whole of BDR operating as a single family. This culture is deeply inculcated and practised daily. 

"It’s a very flat structure, because as a leader I walk at ground level at all times," Dharmesh says. "It’s only team work that makes anybody successful. I may have an individual dream, but if I don’t have a good team, nothing can really work. Ego and professional jealousy always trigger a migration of manpower, but I can proudly say that at BDR our work culture, created from a family environment and teamwork, ensures minimal rotation." 

The aim to live a quality and prolonged life

Dharmesh brushes off the thought of competition, explaining his focus continues to be on trendsetting and creating niche products. "Our major advantage is our identification capacity, using difficult chemistry to identify complicated molecules that we then market ourselves. It is survival of the fittest, and there is no point in griping about the competition because if you invent something, you should be confident of defeating any kind of challenge." One of BDR’s major milestones was drastically slashing the cost of medicine for metastatic prostate cancer treatment.

"While the MNC’s drug costs the patient around US$8,000 for a pack of 120 tablets, we at BDR, standing by our philosophy of  ‘affordability and accessibility’, are selling at a much more affordable cost of less than US$350 for a course of a month’s treatment, while ensuring uninterrupted supply. We clearly witnessed that with accessibility and affordability, the masses could be helped, not only with our products for prostate cancer but for other very critical illnesses like lung infections from asbestos or breast cancer. We have had some excellent success stories, and it is a great satisfaction for me on a personal level that all the hard work has really paid off and given so much benefit to so many."

Despite the billions of dollars being poured into research and development around the world, the billion-dollar question still remains. Will there ever be an affordable and permanent cure for cancer? 

"There is a revolution in India and around the world, which does not mean this disease will be cured, but it does mean that people will live longer with it. There is a much greater health consciousness. People are getting regular health check-ups, which means earlier diagnosis and treatment at an earlier stage. I won’t say it’s 100% curable, but it’s definitely not a death sentence — people can live a quality, prolonged life."