Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw receives HK Firodia Lifetime Achievement Award 2022

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Executive Chairperson, Biocon, has been awarded the HK Firodia Lifetime Achievement Award 2022 for excellence in science and technology by the HK Firodia Memorial Foundation on the 25th anniversary of the
award, a statement from Biocon has notified.

According to the statement, the HK Firodia Awards Selection Committee unanimously decided to confer the Lifetime Achievement Award to Mazumdar-Shaw for her “monumental contributions as a global leader in biotechnology innovation and entrepreneurship.”

On receiving the award, Mazumdar-Shaw, in the statement, said, “I feel extremely privileged and humbled to be recognised for my lifetime efforts in building Biocon to be a responsible and empathetic biotech company that is driven by the purpose of delivering affordable access to essential medicines. As a scientist, I was inspired by the vision of creating an organisation that leverages science and technology to widen access to life-saving drugs for patients on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. It is through our philosophy of affordable innovation that we have been able to make a difference to global health equity by ensuring that no patient, anywhere in the world, is denied essential and life-saving biologic drugs on account of affordability.”

As the chief guest at the awards ceremony held in Pune, Mazumdar-Shaw felicitated two more leading women in science. She presented the HK Firodia Vijnan Ratna Award to Dr Gagandeep Kang, eminent virologist and Professor of Microbiology, Department of Gastrointestinal Sciences, Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore; and the HK Firodia Vijnan Bhushan Award to Dr Tessy Thomas, distinguished scientist and Director General, Aeronautical Systems, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the statement added.

The HK Firodia Award was instituted in 1996 in memory of the Late Shri HK Firodia, who is considered the doyen of the Indian automobile industry. The awards are given to eminent Indian scientists for their original and world-class contributions to any branch of science or technology, the statement concluded.