Her Father let her Join the Family Business only After she Came Back with a Solid Degree and Work Experience From a few hundred crore, Emcure became Rs 4,500 crore company under her leadership

For Namita Thapar, Executive Director, Emcure Pharmaceuticals, the family business was never served on the platter, which she could just grab. In fact, throughout her childhood, she had to prepare well for it, and at each step, had to prove her mettle. "My father repeatedly reminded me and my brother that we needed a solid education and work experience; and only if he felt we deserve it, we would get to join the business," shares Namita. A young achiever, she became a Chartered Accountant at 21, then she got her MBA from Duke University and worked in the US for the next six years before her father approached her to join the business. Talking about some of her bold moves at Emcure, Namita says, "One of them would be convincing my father to get a younger team so that we could create a leadership bandwidth, and be future ready with some fresh perspectives."

According to her, it took a lot of hard work to convince her father that she could take care of the business in India. Currently, she looks at Finance, HR and the business in India with over 4,000 medical representatives, whereas her husband and brother look at the global business.

Namita has been able to strengthen automation, introduced several new systems and has also ventured into new therapeutic areas. As per her, "I want to make HR a much more strategic and stronger force with a "talent wins' and "people first' approach. She also runs a franchise of Young Entrepreneurs Academy, USA, in India that teaches entrepreneurship to 11-18-year-olds.

Talking about her future plans, she proudly says, "Emcure is a Rs 4,500 crore company with the potential of becoming Rs 10,000 crore organization in the next two-three years. We need to clear a couple of roadblocks that we are currently facing and once we do that, effective execution is the only thing needed to achieve our sales aspiration and a blockbuster IPO."

This article was first published in the June 2018 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here)