Why should 70% of women have anaemia in India? Why should 50% mental health affect women more than men? Ask these questions. Because when there is good times and there will be bad times. So there is no point in just being ecstatic at one time and being depressed at the other. The healthcare research is done mostly on men and it is not done on women and children. In tribal India, which is about 8% of our population, the average age is 11 years less than the rest of India. My God. We had gone to meet the honorable President of India and she said that in her village, at 64, she was the longest surviving person. How do we get 70 million people out of multi-dimensional poverty in the next whatever years we...
So you're dedicating yourself...
So that is the... and that is the prayer and the aspiration. Let's see how it goes.
Hello, I am Nagma Mulla and welcome to a new episode of Give It A Go. Today I'm joined by Dr. Swati and Ajay Piramal. Two visionaries who've built empires in business while keeping their compasses pointed towards social change. Swati is the chairperson at Piramal Group and has been a driving force in healthcare innovation and social impact, leading initiatives in rural health and education and women's empowerment with a strategic vision that connects grassroots work with larger systems. Ajay, chairman at Piramal Group, has steered the business through decades of transformation, but his parallel journey in healthcare access and education has been equally defining. This conversation is about ambition and execution. The beliefs that fuel their work and how they're creating impact that goes the distance. Dr. Swati, Mr. Piramal, thank you so much for joining us. We are so, so privileged to have you in this conversation. I want to start from the start. I want to begin with you. When you had joined the business, when you were leading the business, you were just 24. That's a very early or very young age to be in that kind of position. How does that influence the way you see wealth? And you know, the making of it and the abundance of it. How did it impact you as an individual?
So when you look at wealth, in some ways I think I'm blessed to be in a family where always wealth was not given as much importance as I think it is given today in the sense that as far as giving is concerned and I think we've had a very good lineage and heritage. My grandfather came to Mumbai from Rajasthan with just ₹50 in his pocket and he did some business. And he didn't make that much wealth in the early years but one of the first things that he did, and this was in the early 1900s is to go back to Rajasthan. And to open first of all, a school which was then with what we used to call then Harijans or which you call Dalit. So that in itself is a very unique thing. In the sense that Rajasthan was quite conservative but yet he started that. The second thing that he did is to start a school for girls' education, again in a conservative place like Rajasthan.
It was difficult to do or it was quite pioneering and so he did that.
And in that sense, if you look at the percentage of his wealth that he put into philanthropy was much higher than what we do or what people talk about in the giving pledge. So that's the sort of heritage that we come from and we just continue with it. So whether you have more wealth or less wealth at one stage, it doesn't matter.
You feel responsible for it in a big way.
To add to Ajay's story. There was a riot in the town of Bagar because parents didn't want to send their daughters to school. But the school was a pioneering effort. It was late, maybe early 1930s. And still today, women's education is very important in that city and it's 100% now. You know, literacy.
That's incredible, and this was done decades ago.
So that has been achieved. Because of so many years, more than 75 years of education and every child is literate.
Amazing, amazing. And that's great. I mean, with you, I would actually also like to know when this kind of wealth and business and influence is there. Is there a moment, has there ever been a moment of shift like... you know, for the family, when you're holding the family together as well. You already have a lineage of good giving as well of good business. But as someone who's also the custodian of all of that have there been moments where it was very important to be grounded back in, you know, where we belong and what we stand for?
Yes, even in my family, my parents' family giving was very important. We come from the Gujarati areas and they also were part of the freedom movement and they also built schools and so both families had that lineage of giving and deep spirituality which today grounds you as a family into thinking about what is life about. And spirituality has helped us bring and keep the family together.
And personally, you've also bridged medicine, healthcare, you know, and business. What ties all of this together for you?
The sense of 'Seva Bhav', I think Ajay will also expand on that. The idea of the service, the idea even as a young girl, I wanted to do 'Seva Bhav' for a young child I saw walking on the street in Parel and I was a medical student then. And I saw her completely paralyzed and I thought that shouldn't be. It was a very cruel sight for a little girl not to be able to run or walk. And she had polio and I wanted to create a no polio zone in a 10 kilometer radius in this mill area of Parel. And I did achieve it. First I used to get 25,000 kids with paralysis of some sort. Then it was down to zero.
So it was a success of public health that I saw myself that it could be done very easily. I remember a little sweet story. I went to my father-in-law and I said, you know Babuji, the problem is that I give the vaccine and then the mother doesn't come back again. Can I give them a little piece of cloth from your mill? You make millions of meters of cloth and can I make 1 meter of cloth for all the children who finish the 3 vaccines? And he did. So, it was funny that everybody on the street of Lower Parel where we travel right now were wearing a little Baba suit made of this striped piece of cloth. And we achieved complete vaccination.
And zero polio, you know, after... So you had incentivized the whole vaccination. Yeah, it was just for fun and my father-in-law was very sweet, he agreed instantly and it was a lesson for me to show that public health could change lives.
And then I went on to study public health in the US later because this incident, really I felt was a turning point in a young doctor's life.
Yes, yes, and that's an incredible story. In fact, on 'Seva Bhav' and well, I was new in the sector more than 10 years ago and I have heard you speak of 'Seva Bhav' and it did impact the way I became a professional in the space as well. It's a very beautiful ethos. You also have in your leadership and business also invoked Gita many times. What are some of these? Would you expand a little bit on that because it'll be lovely to hear it from you again.
So 'Seva Bhav' means what? It is that, you know, the way you give. According to me, there are four ways of giving. If you look at the Gita, they always say something which is Tamsik. Every action of yours is really three modes. Whether it is Tamsik, Rajsik, Satvik. Tamsik is a mode when you give to somebody who doesn't deserve. Rajsik is a mode when you give but the reason behind when you want to give is that you want your name to be there. More than the giving, it's the name that is important. The third is Satvik. The Satvik is the way of giving when you are giving not because of your name but because you want to actually benefit somebody. So it's really like giving without any reason to get your name known, and that is the better higher method of giving. But the biggest, the best mode of giving, the Gita says is when you give... When you think you are a mere instrument of the Lord. So in that case, when you are giving that's why we thought of... I mean 'Seva Bhav' is nothing new, it is inherent in our Indian tradition. Which means when you give, you're giving to somebody who's at the same level as you. And you are giving and you are having joy giving it. It's not that I'm giving to somebody at a higher level, you know, I am at a higher level, the other person at a lower level. So just as a mother who's nursing her baby goes through difficulty. It's not that, you know there are so many nights you have to keep awake and so much of inconvenience if you look at it like that. But she gives it out of love. So that's the same way when we give somebody. When we do something, it's not out of charity in that sense but it is out of giving with love, with karuna with compassion and love. So that is 'Seva Bhav' and that's what we've been trying to do in all our activities. So the core of our foundation is based on Seva.
Yeah, the core and your personality is also I can feel that at the core of it all is the desire to do good. And to be of service, that is a very beautiful emotion. Thank you for expanding on it. I've been very inspired by it for more than a decade. Dr. Swati, you became the first president of ASSOCHAM, as well, an additional responsibility that puts you at the center of many, many influential people who are watching you. With your, from your vantage point of healthcare of business and then in a community of influential people how have you been able to... You know and see the possibilities or tie in some of the possibilities that can benefit people.
Yes, so, as such I've never had a woman as president for that matter, all the apex chambers of commerce did not have at that time, women. So it was a pioneering effort and I created a kind of mini revolution because we had 100 committees, I made them all women. 100% women. So whether it was, you know, highways to banking to nuclear energy, to you know, renews iron and steel. I found women everywhere and made them into, in charge of that whole association for that time being. It was a very interesting time because, what, at that time India's growth was 9% and I met nearly 40 heads of state. I, that was a privilege which you can't get in 1 year. To meet everybody from President Obama onwards. But you know, I realized one thing that women did not have a voice. In politics, in healthcare in media at that time. And having that voice, I thought was very important. Just for example, the healthcare research is done mostly on men. And it is not done on women and children. So many of the diseases that affect women... you know, breast cancer ovarian cancer, and so on, very little research was done. And therefore the great fluxes that a woman has in her body. Not studied at all. And so this I think brought attention to the fact that more research needs to be done. Women need to have a voice in home care, about their children, about their families and mental health at that time was very new and it wasn't even a known word but to bring that to the attention was something that I liked to do in that year.
That's... yes. The... we keep saying this in our sector that one, one big barrier is getting women into workforces in different sectors. But the other one which we don't speak about that often is women in leadership roles because unless women get into leadership roles, the systemic shifts don't start happening. You know, you can accommodate the crowd, but change happens when you have women leaders and you're saying the same thing.
Yeah, here. It does take a lot.
You have always, always spoken about duties and responsibilities, how to balance the power that you have with the responsibility that your chair gives you. And there have been some big wins in your life. How do you then come and one is can you recall any big win that was really, really heady for you as well as for you? And then how do you center yourself back and say this is one more big thing and we move on?
So we've had... I mean, fortunately we've had good enough successes. And I mean, where do I begin? So the fact that we... when we entered the pharmaceutical industry we had no experience of pharma. It was a totally new industry for us. It was a small multinational which was in terms of the ranking ORG used to rank in terms of size, it still does companies and we were I think 48th. And by, this was in 1988. By 2000 we had said earlier on that we'll be amongst the top five. And actually we were amongst the top five in such a short period. So in that sense, it was, and many people would say it was heady. We sold part of our pharmaceutical business in 2010. That was... and the valuation that we got was the highest globally for any formulations. Generic formulations business. But you know, these things happen according to me... This is where we speak about the Gita which talks about equanimity. It is like, in this... the ocean there are high tides and there are low tides but the ocean if you look at it really remains calm. So that's the example that one must try and follow. Because when there is good times there will be bad times. So there is no point in just you know being ecstatic at one time and being depressed at the other. And this is the way of life. I mean, I don't see anybody who has only had a upward swing and nobody... I mean so we have to understand that and that's what at least, I understand. So... I'm not ecstatic when it is great but I'm not depressed when things don't go our way.
Do you both have the same view of it or sometimes you have to balance each other out?
He doesn't feel excited about anything. So he's calm and he says it's just a drop if you know the rivers come into the ocean, the level still remains the same. And so he's a bit like that. It doesn't matter that the river's overflowing or it's less but the ocean is the same.
The, the, this, this beautiful quality, this inner stability of the soul if I may call it is something people just aspire to especially now when you know wealth is quite sudden. It happens suddenly people are also unable to manage the headiness of the wealth valuations happen and wealth happens. How should one even attempt to be like this?
