NEW DELHI: With the passage of Dr Parvinder Singh, chairman of the Rs 1,400-crore Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd, corporate India has lost one of its role models.

With a powerful vision, he successfully transformed Ranbaxy into one of India's MNCs during the 1980s and 1990s. When family-run businesses in the country are undergoing a painful churning process, Singh made his company into a global player. Instead of opting for his sons to run the company, he chose a professional, DS Brar to hold the reins.

Clearly, Singh is a tough act to follow. The example that he set with Ranbaxy was that it is ultimately the vision statement that differentiates the front-runners from the also-rans in corporate India. That successful business houses will have to look beyond the confines of India. That after acquiring critical size, they will perforce have to think global. This implies benchmarking their practices to international standards to register their presence globally.

Singh successfully did this with Ranbaxy. That too, in a critical industry like drugs and pharmaceuticals. This might appear paradoxical as the country's patents regime is out of sync with WTO requirements till 2005. As a result, out of about 400 formulations available in the global market, only 33 are seen in India. Several global drug majors like Pfizer are also shunning the Indian market.

In this milieu, Ranbaxy, under Singh's leadership, followed a different road map to go global. The company's comparative advantage was in generics and formulations rather than developing new drugs which were rather costly. As patents for a variety of drugs expire, companies like Ranbaxy flood the world market with generic version of those drugs. It thus has become India's first pharma giant to launch generics under its own label in the US.

What took Ranbaxy forward was Singh's clear vision that it must become a research-based international pharmaceutical company with a sales turnover of $1 billion by 2003. Ranbaxy now sells its products in over 40 countries and has manufacturing operations in seven countries including China. Net global sales stand at $433 million. Its entry into the US marked a major step forward in its global drive. Not so long ago, a survey of the consultancy firm Arthur D Little considered Ranbaxy as one of the top 50 Asian firms which were best prepared to excel in the global market place.

Singh ultimately succumbed to a debilitating disease that was detected two years ago. A natural route that family-run businesses take is to ensure that the direct descendants take over the company. Singh was different in this respect as he wanted the best professional to take Ranbaxy forward. This he ensured on June 8 at the company's annual general meeting at Mohali, Chandigarh. The show will thus go on. By his example, he has indicated what corporate India must do to survive in today's demanding environment. Singh clearly is a hero of his times.