BT Editor highlights the must-read stories in July 5, 2015, issue

Just as the past five years have seen an explosion of e-commerce and digital business entrepreneurs in India, and the 1990s was the era of the Indian IT services entrepreneurs, the 1970s saw a burst of start-ups in the pharmaceutical sector. Indeed, you could say that the Indian pharmaceutical industry was actually born in the 1970s. Before that, a few multinational drug companies dominated the market, and the Indian presence in the drug industry was minuscule.

In the 1970s, the Indian government decided to remove product patents, which had two effects. First, most multinational drug companies decided to stop bringing newly discovered drugs, still under patents in other markets, to India. Two, a large number of Indian entrepreneurs decided to get into the business of drug manufacturing. Some of them focused solely on bulk drugs, while others also stepped into the formulations arena.

Hyderabad - and the undivided Andhra Pradesh as it was then - became the crucible of Indian drug manufacturing, though Mumbai, Ahmedabad-Vadodara and Delhi also boasted some big companies and gave rise to several start-ups (Delhi had Ranbaxy, while Mumbai had Cipla, Lupin and Wockhardt). There was a reason why a large number of start-ups cropped up in Hyderabad. The public sector Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Ltd was based there, and it was the breeding ground of excellent chemists, many of whom left to form their own companies. By far, the most illustrious of these entrepreneurs was the late Dr Anji Reddy, who created Dr. Reddy's Laboratories. Meanwhile, Parvinder Singh of Ranbaxy Laboratories, Y.K. Hamied of Cipla, and Habil Khorakiwala of Wockhardt were revitalising their drug firms in other parts of the country. But they were just a few of the known entrepreneurs - literally a few hundred others got into the game as well.

Over the last decade and a half, the Indian pharma and health care sector has doubled in size. Many companies have become globally competitive and have significant presence in the generics market overseas. Dilip Shanghvi, who set up Sun Pharma with a capital of Rs 10,000 in Vapi, is now either India's richest or second-richest man, depending on which ranking of Indian billionaires you follow. Pharma and health care entrepreneurs account for at least a quarter of the top 100 richest Indians. But while some of the pharmaceutical barons are household names, there are quite a few who lead an exceedingly low-profile existence even though they have built significant empires. In our cover story this issue, Senior Editor P.B. Jayakumar, Associate Editor E. Kumar Sharma and Deputy Editor Venkatesha Babu profile eight such hidden gems of the Indian pharma and health care industry.

This issue of Business Today is packed with in-depth features on a variety of sectors of the Indian economy. Do not miss the story on how venture debt is taking off in the country, the analysis of why 3G is doomed to die in India and the reason why mega-food parks in India are struggling to take off even six years after the policy was announced.