Learn to engage with stakeholders, says Kiran Mazumdar Shaw
Growing your business is difficult in the best of times. Competition is intensifying as new markets open up and hitherto unknown players step into the arena. Customers are demanding the best at the lowest price. All-pervasive technology is placing new demands and accelerating the pace of innovation. As a result yield is flattening , squeezing margins to death. Now, add the biggest challenge of them all: a severe recession, which has tested most organisations.
We have survived and learned some hard lessons in the bargain that can help us create an even more successful business in the better times that lie ahead. After all, challenges are an intrinsic part of the growth of any organisation. One can either reel under challenges or find innovative ways to surmount them.
Despite being a debt-free company and powered by innovation, Biocon was not immune to the recession. However, we have dealt with our share of challenges in the past and this was a strength we could draw upon in these hard times. In my mind the most significant challenges we faced were after we went public in 2004 and these provided us with invaluable lessons.
Learn to Engage with Stakeholders
Although we were only the second Indian company to cross a market capitalisation of $1 billion on the first day of listing, we were unable to sustain that momentum. When the IPO opened, a major share of Biocon’s revenues came from statins. Soon after , the global price of statins plunged, sparking investor fears that our profits would be adversely affected. Learning to manage investor expectations was a huge turning point for us. We were faced with the task of making investors understand that biotechnology, as a product-driven , research-heavy , capital-intensive field with long gestational periods to get a product to market, needed long-term investments. Unlike the IT sector, which is service-driven and can garner quick gains, biotechnology needs time to register profits. Again, in contrast to IT, biotechnology must adhere to strict regulatory compliances. This perceived risk had made investors wary and our challenge was to proactively dispel misconceptions and regain their confidence.
Learn to be Different
If organisations learn to harness any change to their advantage, they can use rough winds to come out ahead of the pack. A great enabling factor in this respect is differentiation. Biocon has stayed ahead of the economic turmoil because differentiation insulated us from market fluctuations. Companies that endeavour to be different are naturally poised to gain by forging ahead in the marketplace during such times. They possess that something extra which empowers them to offer the market what no one else has, thus shaking free of the crowd which is badly hit in a recession.
We have survived and learned some hard lessons in the bargain that can help us create an even more successful business in the better times that lie ahead. After all, challenges are an intrinsic part of the growth of any organisation. One can either reel under challenges or find innovative ways to surmount them.
Despite being a debt-free company and powered by innovation, Biocon was not immune to the recession. However, we have dealt with our share of challenges in the past and this was a strength we could draw upon in these hard times. In my mind the most significant challenges we faced were after we went public in 2004 and these provided us with invaluable lessons.
Learn to Engage with Stakeholders
Although we were only the second Indian company to cross a market capitalisation of $1 billion on the first day of listing, we were unable to sustain that momentum. When the IPO opened, a major share of Biocon’s revenues came from statins. Soon after , the global price of statins plunged, sparking investor fears that our profits would be adversely affected. Learning to manage investor expectations was a huge turning point for us. We were faced with the task of making investors understand that biotechnology, as a product-driven , research-heavy , capital-intensive field with long gestational periods to get a product to market, needed long-term investments. Unlike the IT sector, which is service-driven and can garner quick gains, biotechnology needs time to register profits. Again, in contrast to IT, biotechnology must adhere to strict regulatory compliances. This perceived risk had made investors wary and our challenge was to proactively dispel misconceptions and regain their confidence.
Learn to be Different
If organisations learn to harness any change to their advantage, they can use rough winds to come out ahead of the pack. A great enabling factor in this respect is differentiation. Biocon has stayed ahead of the economic turmoil because differentiation insulated us from market fluctuations. Companies that endeavour to be different are naturally poised to gain by forging ahead in the marketplace during such times. They possess that something extra which empowers them to offer the market what no one else has, thus shaking free of the crowd which is badly hit in a recession.
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