If Cadila Pharmaceuticals was started as an answer to “angrezi dawa” by late IA Modi in 1951, then his wife Shilaben Indravan Modi was pretty much the “soul” of the company.

The first employee with one of the country’s earliest drugmakers, Shilaben passed away recently at the age of 85, four years after the founder IA Modi’s passing.

Cadila’s story is no different from a new age start-up born in a garage. The company was founded by IA Modi with his school friend Ramanbhai Patel. The two friends and their wives used to make medicines in a room and sell them, a top executive with the company had told Business Line on the founder’s passing.

“Shilaben would herself wash and label the products that Cadila produced from a three-room apartment rented for Rs 45 a month at Azad Society in Ahmedabad,” a note from the company said on her passing. IA Modi would then visit doctors on his cycle to collect orders and deliver the products, it added. And this was at a time when the pharmaceutical landscape in the country was dominated by foreign companies.

“It was only her concern for the well-being of the common man that inspired her husband to manufacture gripe water, which was incidentally the first indigenously produced gripe water in India,” the note said.

From being the first employee, Shilaben saw the company grow to a stage where it today provides direct employment to more than 10,000 people in India and abroad. Presently, the founder’s son Dr Rajiv Modi is Chairman and Managing Director at Cadila Pharmaceuticals Ltd, a closely held firm.

jyothi.datta@thehindu.co.in

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