A little more than a week before Malvinder Singh finally hung up his boots at Ranbaxy, India’s largest drug maker, most employees were simply too busy battling the crisis to notice the activity inside the headquarters in Gurgaon. A few employees did, however, notice that several valuable paintings that adorned the walls of the headquarters had been removed and taken away.
The first stirrings of trouble had just begun to hit Ranbaxy. Managing operations spread across 50-plus countries was becoming too complex. Sales growth had begun to peter out in the global as well as local markets. A coterie had begun to form around the Singh family. Poor human resource practices led to high employee turnover. In research and development alone, four departmental heads resigned in quick succession. After remaining debt-free in the early part of this decade, Ranbaxy began piling up debt from 2006. The FDA investigation had just started but no one quite knew the extent of damage it would eventually inflict.
(This story appears in the 19 June, 2009 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
This all debacles is bound to happen and believe me many more to come. Because Ranbaxy has long history of caring corrupt peoples in higher management and instead of taking strong steps, they r complimenting each other by hiding each others fault. As small employee of Ranbaxy no body knows it better than me . You will find the truth with one letter written by me 8 months earlier and they have still done nothing instead of all proofs.
on Jul 3, 2013Daichi will experience death by a thousand cuts unless it quickly changes the way it is operating the acquired entity. Notwithstanding the recent apology by its Global CEO for having screwed up big time, it is time for it to realize that it has been put between a rock and a hard place by the deeds of its past CEO and his hand-picked management team. Silence by the management team when so much bungling was going on makes them equal partner in crime. The quicker the Japanese realize this, better it would be for future of this company and its hardworking employees.
on Sep 17, 2009A weak CEO who doesn't have a good perspective of the industry would always be highly reliant on his people more than necessary. Atul Sobti is one such example since he is not from pharma background. He is working with the same group of people due to his own comfort and three year tenure of his contract....who cares about Long term wealth creation for the shareholders....
on Aug 27, 2009Well said. I worked in the London office of the company and all Peter and his Finance guy did were to count their BA miles and Hyatt points and plan their next trip to collect some more !! Same guy is now running the European operations without any integrity and experience of sales at all !! How can the Japanese work with the same set of management that were hand in glove with the previous owner and ran the company into ground in the first place? If they want to dig themselves out of the hole, they must occupy all the key management positions and take control.
on Aug 24, 2009This is sad to hear about a company that Mr. Parvinder Singh had set up with his hard work, passion and quality standards being destroyed by his successors due to their poor vision, poor management, opportunistic approaches and of course a poor quality. I have enjoyed the best time in Ranbaxy during early phase and can see the clear difference from past to present. Daichi has already burnt their hands in the generic arm and now it will be burning further their feet with the discovery and development arm, if they don't take timely actions. They should give a serious thought that why senior management at discovery
on Jun 25, 2009If only Malavinder had paid attention to business operations and details and was not too busy fooling around with girls in his office, the business would have continued to flourish.<br /> His choice of senior executives in Peter Burema and his Bengali a**lickers destroyed the company completely.<br /> <br /> I hope Daichi is able to clean the company's senior management and get fresh blood.
on Jun 15, 2009