Vinita Gupta's entrepreneurial drive: Lupin now a big pharma player in the US

Sunday, 28/08/2011

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/nri/nris-in-news/vinita-guptas-entrepreneurial-drive-lupin-now-a-big-pharma-player-in-the-us/articleshow/9759940.cms

Vinita Gupta typically can't think beyond drugs. In fact, she is quite the drug lord, posting sales of $483 million in 2010-11. By her own admission, she spends a lot of time in "building teams and creating a niche product pipeline for the US markets". And her efforts are paying off - she heads the fifth largest, and the fastest growing, generics player (by prescriptions) in the US. We are talking about Lupin Pharmaceuticals Inc, US, of which 43-year-old Gupta is the CEO.

Baltimore, Maryland-based Gupta took over Lupin's US business in 1992, after picking up her MBA degree from Kellogg School of Management. "I have lived abroad for over two decades during which I completed my education and began working on expanding the business here," she says. But ask her if she misses the advantage that she would surely have enjoyed as the daughter of Desh Bandhu Gupta, the founder of the flagship company, had she had been in India, and she's quick to shake her head.

Challenges of Working in America

Perhaps it was the challenge of it all. "As a student, I had to persuade the dean at Kellogg to give me admission since I was just 20 years old and one of the youngest in my class. The biggest challenge at that time was being away from my family and learning to live and grow alone," she shares. This, she claims, taught her to be independent and to find her own way around obstacles. "It also helped me appreciate the little things in life that we so easily take for granted," she adds.

Then came the challenge of carving out her slice of the American pie, building infrastructure, and creating processes and systems that integrated the team in the US with the parent company headquartered in Mumbai. The turning point in her career - and in Lupin's overseas fortunes - was the launch of their flagship brand, Suprax, a pediatric anti-infective drug, which marked their entry into the US branded market.

"All these years later, we still remain the only Indian pharma major with a substantial brands business in the US while our peers are still largely in the generics business," she says. According to Gupta, it is the same entrepreneurial spirit that drives Indian technology companies in Silicon Valley that helped her to leverage opportunities and take Lupin to where it stands today in the American market.