MPW 2023: Here’s why Emcure Pharmaceuticals’ Namita Thapar just loves her business

Namita Thapar simply loves her business. As Executive Director of the India business at Pune-based Emcure Pharmaceuticals, she barely pauses when you ask her what the vision for the company is. “We will continue to scale both our domestic and international businesses and sustain our investments in R&D, especially novelty drug delivery systems, complex injectables & biosimilars, apart from strengthening our manufacturing capabilities,” she says.

A prominent face for a while, following the success of Shark Tank India, Thapar comes with strong academic credentials. She qualified as a chartered accountant at just 21, before going on to Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business for an MBA. The next six years were spent working for cardiovascular device manufacturer Guidant Corporation across finance and marketing. In 2007, she came back and took charge as CFO of Emcure, founded by her father Satish Mehta, which is primarily into manufacturing formulations and APIs. At that point, it was a Rs 500 crore company; today it is at well over Rs 6,000 crore.

As business grew, so did her responsibilities. “The way to handle that is to hire people way smarter than me and empowering them. It also helps that I am very good at time management,” she says.