SHAW-NING STAR
The head of biopharmaceutical company Biocon, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw has taken a pledge to divert half her wealth towards philanthropy. The 64-year-old entrepreneur has been active in Indian philanthropic circles, especially in research around cancer cure. The MazumdarShaw Cancer Center in Bengaluru has 1,400 beds and provides affordable cancer care to patients.
Excerpts from her Giving Pledge letter:
Having grown up in a middle-class family in India, I was brought up by my parents to believe that wealth creation is about making a difference to society. As a first generation entrepreneur, I built my company with these guiding principles. My success with Biocon has given me the wherewithal to pursue my commitment to social inclusiveness. “I am inspired to join Bill and Melinda Gates and the growing fraternity of the Giving Pledge in their philanthropic efforts to make this world a better place. I have been giving away half of my income towards philanthropy on an annual basis. My will reflects this intent very succinctly. “My philanthropic efforts are largely directed towards making a difference to global healthcare... I am also conscious of the fact that two thirds of the world’s population have little or no access to an acceptable quality of healthcare… I have therefore adopted a large number of Primary Health Centres in rural India to transform them into Telemedicine and technology-enabled centres that can bridge the deficit of medical resources. The hope is that these validated models can be scaled rapidly by the government to leapfrog the present system that has failed miserably to provide a basic right to healthcare for its citizens. “I have also used my philanthropy to create a large Cancer Centre, a 1,400-bed MazumdarShaw Cancer Centre (MSCC) in partnership with Dr Devi Shetty, whose commitment to compassionate capitalism is legendary. The affordable cancer care model relies on the economics of scale and early-stage diagnosis. “My philanthropy also supports scientists and research-driven clinicians at the Mazumdar Shaw Centre for Transnational Research (MSCTR), and at the Koch Institute of Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, Boston. My hope is that these efforts will combine both therapeutic and diagnostic innovations that will enable personalised and precision medicine that can lower treatment costs while improving outcome. “I would like to be remembered as someone who made a difference to global healthcare through affordable innovation.”