Dilip Surana of Microlabs to receive Prestigious “Entrepreneur of the Year 2014” at India Leadership Conclave 2014

Dilip Surana of Microlabs to receive Prestigious “Entrepreneur of the Year 2014” at India Leadership Conclave 2014

The Ability to turn around Mirolab’s business expansion with a mix of new product Launces & concentrating R & D as the backbone are the criteria’s for the coveted Honour.

The Low Profile Promoter of Microlabs Limited, Mr. Dilip Surana has propelled Microlabs as India’s Most Successful Pharmaceutical Company featuring among the top 20 pharma companies in India is a multi-faceted healthcare organization with a proficient marketing team, state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities and R&D centres that are at par with international standards. All this, robustly backed by a strong distribution network and path-breaking research work has placed us amongst India’s fast growing transnational healthcare organizations. Mr. Dilip G. Surana serves as the Chairman and Managing Director of Micro Labs Ltd. Mr. Surana has 20 years of rich experience in Pharmaceuticals. He serves as an Independent Non Executive Director of Arihant Foundation & Housing Limited.

India Leadership Conclave 2014 ( www.ilc2014.in ) organized by Asia’s Most Analytical News Media Indian Affairs ( www.indianaffairs.tv ) will felicitate Mr Dilip Surana for his commanding leadership & visionary directions to lift Micro labs as a top 10 India’s Most Admired Pharma Company for the coveted & prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year 2014 Award on Friday, 18^th July 2014 in Mumbai

The visionary Chairman of Country’s major pharma giant microlabs has a simple living attitude as he says “When you’re an entrepreneur, everything’s on the line. People don’t realize that. You believe so much in it, you’re willing to risk everything, as I did. It’s hard to lose everything and start over again. But I think that’s what separates successful entrepreneurs from unsuccessful ones — the ability to fall off your bike, get back on and keep riding. It’s very hard to achieve success but it’s even harder to maintain success. Trying to expand and get bigger even are more challenging”. At Microlabs, we have processes in place & our greatest strength is our people.

Ranking 10th among prescriptions and 20th in sales, Micro’s brand portfolio includes some of the topmost brands in various specialties like Cardiology, Diabetology, Anti-infectives, Ophthalmology, Pain, etc. Amidst our proud achievers is Dolo, an award-winning brand highly prescribed for fever management.

The company is also at the forefront in social contribution, striving to be a model corporate citizen in terms of Environmental Protection & Social Initiatives with significant contributions in the areas of education and health.

Micro Labs is poised to achieve unparalleled status in the global pharmaceutical industry. Backed by a profound and resolute vision, we now have our eyes set on attaining the $1 billion mark by 2015.

Micro Labs is among the top 20 pharma companies in India. It is still 100 percent owned by the Suranas. It is in many ways representative of an entire class of family-run businesses that have been able to achieve scale without diluting equity.

Rs 2,500 crore in 2013-14 with profit of Rs 350 crore.Micro Labs was started in 1973 by the late GC Surana, a pharmaceutical dealer who moved from Rajasthan to Bangalore a decade earlier. The first steps were to bring in new products from Europe as India then did not have a patent act. Much of the business was based in south India. This grew slowly, with plants in multiple locations (such as Karnataka, Goa, Baddi in Himachal Pradesh and Pondicherry) as well as through investment in research. Then, in the 1990s, Surana’s sons, Dilip and Anand, who is also a director, joined the business and have since helped grow it to its present stature. Micro Labs is in the active pharmaceutical ingredients (raw materials) and finished formulations business with a marketing and distribution network in both India and overseas. Multinational pharma companies Pfizer and Mylan had made a play for it, but the deal has never materialized as the brothers are reluctant to sell out.

Business is divided between the brothers—Dilip focuses on the domestic market, while Anand manages exports which account for about 40 percent of the revenue, and this is expected to rapidly grow in the coming years. “International volumes will soon be bigger than domestic,” says Dilip. The group has notched a compounded average growth rate of 14 percent.

According to Dilip, the group’s philosophy has always been “high quality, high price”. Micro Labs focuses on formulations, and not so much on bulk drugs. It sells branded products around the world, except in regulated markets like the US.

The Suranas are considered pioneers in India in speciality marketing and were among the first to create specialized business units (SBUs) focused on different health problems. Micro Labs has 14 such divisions, which allows complete focus on research and marketing of molecules for the specific problem. There is a separate sales force and accounting team for each SBU as well.

Though his business is far away from desh (home state Rajasthan), Dilip’s cultural identity is immediately obvious to anyone who calls him. His cellphone caller tune is a Marwari bhajan dedicated to Lord Adinath. “I spend a fifth of my time on religious activities,” he says and is well-connected to his village in Pali district, a 100 km from Jodhpur. The entire family visits Pali at least twice a year.

Keeping costs low has been the group’s mantra. Expenses are always based on actual rather than expected income. “Problems start for business groups who do not follow this rule,” says Dilip. Working on low costs means never being a high-cost borrower. The group bargains hard to get the extra 0.5-1 percent benefit from banks. Anand is the financial whiz in the family, and has often been able to figure out the best structure for borrowings.