BRIAN TEMPEST took charge of a multinational firm. Now, he is casting it in a truly global mould

In 1993, when the then Ranbaxy Laboratories chairman Parvinder Singh and his trusted lieutenant D.S. Brar scripted an ambitious roadmap to take the company global, very few of their peers were thinking the same way. More than a decade down the line, even Singh would have been proud of what that plan has achieved.

With marketing and sales infrastructures in as many as 45 countries (being increased to 100) and manufacturing plants in seven countries, Ranbaxy today is more global than any other Indian company. Going forward, it will perhaps be more global than what Parvinder Singh had planned.
Already, only 22 per cent of Ranbaxy's nearly-$1.2-billion revenues come from domestic operations, and in Brian Tempest it has a non-Indian CEO with global experience. The company's global headquarters for intellectual property and legal affairs have been set up in Princeton, New Jersey. And its market research headquarters is in London. It is listed in India and the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, and 18 per cent of its 9,500 employees are non-Indians.

Last year, a proposal to shift Ranbaxy's global corporate headquarters to Princeton got nixed. But nobody is sure what may happen in the future, especially when the company's global revenues are projected to hit $5 billion in 2012. Ranbaxy's president (pharma), Malvinder Singh, does not rule out any possibility. "We will spend more time where more (of our) markets and people are," says Singh, who travels almost 20 days a month.

At present, Tempest and Singh are busy converting a largely Indian organisation into a global pharmaceutical power.

Ranbaxy understands that despite structuring the company as a global organisation for more than half a decade, the processes still need some more refining. "Sometimes you move so fast that processes are stretched. Our processes have to catch up," says Tempest. Of particular interest are the HR policies, which have remained mostly India- or Indian-centric. This overhaul is important because Ranbaxy will dip further into the global talent pool to man its operations around the world.

So Singh is doing just that. First, the board and the compensation committee are expected to soon approve a broad HR framework that will allow country managers to define policies in their own geographies for the first time. Two, Singh is preparing tomorrow's leaders. He is shuffling some of his youngest and most talented professionals across geographies to ready them for more challenges. Last year, he shifted about half a dozen country managers. The youngest of them, Chinappa Reddy, is 30 years old and manages the businesses in Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Columbia and Argentina.

The theory that Ranbaxy may not remain largely dependant on India derives its symptoms from its R&D operations too. The board continues to believe that research out of India brings competitive advantages. But that's true only for basic research. Sometime in the future, Ranbaxy plans to create a clinical research infrastructure in the largest market, the US. That will be its truly global avatar.