Dual Strength

Kiran Divi and Nilima Motaparti are under the spotlight. Indeed, all eyes are on the son and daughter of Divi's Laboratories founder Murali Divi.

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Photo: A.Prabhakar RaoPhoto: A.Prabhakar Rao
E Kumar Sharma
  • May 1, 2017,
  • Updated May 3, 2017 1:03 PM IST

The Madhapur office is a symbol of heady growth. Divi's, with `3,816 crore in revenues during FY2015/16, had spent `100 crore on the new office. Murali, who was part of Dr Reddy's Laboratories founding team, broke away from founder K. Anji Reddy to set up Divi's in the 1990s. For 25 years, he operated out of a functional office in Ameerpet, close to Dr Reddy's corporate office which has also moved into an office on the tony Banjara Hills Road.

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"This building is an exception. Our father is the kind of person who would first invest on the lab and then the office," says Kiran Divi, a Masters in Pharmacy. Nilima Motaparti, who has Masters in International Business from Gitam Institute of Foreign Trade, Visakhapatnam, and Masters in International Finance from Glasgow University, UK, adds: "Our father has always told us we may be cash rich and may have no loans but we still need to spend and think like a small company." Post the import alert, Divi's market capitalisation almost halved.

Kiran, a firm believer in health and fitness, leads the company on matters relating to quality control, research, operations, process improvements, regulatory submissions and even HR. He is seen as someone who likes to spend most of his time and resources on quality and manufacturing best practices. He has focused on putting in place "stage-wise process automation for several products". Nilima Motaparti, Chief Controller - Commercial, handles finances and matters related to procurement. Right from her graduation days - around 1999 - Nilima used to work as a trainee at Divi's and spent most of her time with CFO, L. Kishore Babu, understanding the nuances of finance. When Kiran joined in 2001, the company had only 401 employees. Today, it has around 10,000 employees. Nilima joined officially in 2012 and has been trying to de-risk sourcing, building a base of alternative suppliers and entering into long-term procurement contracts for better price negotiations. One of Kiran's priorities is grooming the next line of leadership - the 3G, as they call it (third generation, with the brother and sister as the second generation). The company does not believe in lateral recruitment and hires from colleges.

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Kishore Babu explains that Kiran and Nilima are trying to ensure that Divi's is ahead of the learning curve in terms of chemistry and chemistry capabilities. "It is not China but Europe that is competition to us. We benchmark us against American and European multinationals," he says. But to get there and make a bigger dent, it needs to make the most of this inward focus now to get regulatory compliance issues sorted out.

The Madhapur office is a symbol of heady growth. Divi's, with `3,816 crore in revenues during FY2015/16, had spent `100 crore on the new office. Murali, who was part of Dr Reddy's Laboratories founding team, broke away from founder K. Anji Reddy to set up Divi's in the 1990s. For 25 years, he operated out of a functional office in Ameerpet, close to Dr Reddy's corporate office which has also moved into an office on the tony Banjara Hills Road.

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"This building is an exception. Our father is the kind of person who would first invest on the lab and then the office," says Kiran Divi, a Masters in Pharmacy. Nilima Motaparti, who has Masters in International Business from Gitam Institute of Foreign Trade, Visakhapatnam, and Masters in International Finance from Glasgow University, UK, adds: "Our father has always told us we may be cash rich and may have no loans but we still need to spend and think like a small company." Post the import alert, Divi's market capitalisation almost halved.

Kiran, a firm believer in health and fitness, leads the company on matters relating to quality control, research, operations, process improvements, regulatory submissions and even HR. He is seen as someone who likes to spend most of his time and resources on quality and manufacturing best practices. He has focused on putting in place "stage-wise process automation for several products". Nilima Motaparti, Chief Controller - Commercial, handles finances and matters related to procurement. Right from her graduation days - around 1999 - Nilima used to work as a trainee at Divi's and spent most of her time with CFO, L. Kishore Babu, understanding the nuances of finance. When Kiran joined in 2001, the company had only 401 employees. Today, it has around 10,000 employees. Nilima joined officially in 2012 and has been trying to de-risk sourcing, building a base of alternative suppliers and entering into long-term procurement contracts for better price negotiations. One of Kiran's priorities is grooming the next line of leadership - the 3G, as they call it (third generation, with the brother and sister as the second generation). The company does not believe in lateral recruitment and hires from colleges.

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Kishore Babu explains that Kiran and Nilima are trying to ensure that Divi's is ahead of the learning curve in terms of chemistry and chemistry capabilities. "It is not China but Europe that is competition to us. We benchmark us against American and European multinationals," he says. But to get there and make a bigger dent, it needs to make the most of this inward focus now to get regulatory compliance issues sorted out.

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