Photo: M.Arvindd Shanmugam / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
Born: 1 October 1955 (age 65)
Born Place: Amreli, Gujarat, India
Nationality: Indian
Alma mater: Bhawanipur Education Society College, University of Calcutta
Occupation: Founder and MD of Sun Pharmaceuticals
Net worth: US$8.7 billion (September 2020)
Spouse(s): Vibha Shanghvi
Children: 2
BIOGRAPHY
Dilip Shanghvi (born 1 October 1955) is an Indian billionaire businessman and one of the country’s richest people. He founded Sun Pharmaceuticals. The Government of India awarded him the civilian honour of the Padma Shri in 2016. India Today magazine ranked him 8th in India’s most powerful people of 2017 list.
According to Forbes, as of October 2019, Shanghvi is the 12th richest person in India with a net worth of US$6.9 billion.
EARLY LIFE
Dilip Shanghvi hails from a Jain family who was born in the small town of Amreli in Gujarat to Shantilal Shanghvi and Kumud Shanghvi. Shanghvi earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Calcutta. He spent his childhood and college life with his parents in the Burrabazar locality of Calcutta. He is an alumnus of J. J. Ajmera High School and Bhawanipur Education Society College, where he did his schooling and graduation, respectively.
CAREER
He started by helping his father in his wholesale generic drugs business in Kolkata. It was during this work that he thought of manufacturing his own drugs instead of selling others’ products.
Shanghvi started Sun Pharmaceutical Industries with capital of INR 10,000 in 1982 at Vapi, with one psychiatry drug. In 1997, Sun acquired Caraco Pharma, a loss-making American company, with the aim of expanding Sun’s reach in the United States.[citation needed] Sun also acquired Israel’s Taro Pharma in 2007. Shanghvi stepped down as chairman and CEO in 2012 and chose Israel Makov, formerly CEO of Teva Pharmaceuticals, as his successor; Shanghvi became managing director.
In April 2014 Sun, Ranbaxy, and Daiichi Sankyo (the majority shareholder in Ranbaxy) agreed that Sun would acquire all outstanding shares of Ranbaxy for $3.2 billion in Sun stock and that Sun would take on $800M in Ranbaxy debt; the deal closed in March 2015 and made Sun the largest drug company in India and fifth largest in the world, and made Daiichi the second largest shareholder in Sun.
PERSONAL LIFE
He is married to Vibha Shanghvi. They have a son, Aalok and a daughter, Vidhi, both of whom work for Sun Pharmaceuticals.
Book
In 2019, journalist Soma Das authored The Reluctant Billionaire, the first and only biography of Dilip Shanghvi. Published by Penguin Random House, the book was nominated for Tata Literature Award in the Best Business Book category in November 2019.
The contents of this page are sourced from Wikipedia article on 25 March 2021. The contents are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
