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After Chandavarkar shortlisted a few candidates in 1997, Kiran came in for the final interview. All five shortlisted students already had job offers in hand. The interview lasted forty-five minutes, of which Kiran spoke for forty. She spoke about why she wanted to enter pharmaceuticals and how she wanted the company to grow. That ‘campus-placement experience’ was different for Shreehas Tambe. ‘My offer was from Lupin; I don’t think D.B. Gupta [founder and chairman of Lupin] gave a damn about who was joining the company. A general manager had come from Tarapur and we were all very happy because the salary was nice,’ says Tambe, a hefty man with a sense of humour. On hearing Kiran out, he was impressed that the ‘chairperson’ of the company was explaining to a fresher what the vision was. At twenty-three, the idea of working in a pub city wasn’t bad even though leaving Mumbai was not in his scheme of things. ‘I thought it’d be fun to check out the city for two to three years and then come back to Mumbai,’ he remembers thinking. Kiran said she had spoken to his placement manager; she knew his salary and would match it. She insisted that he say yes to the offer right then. Tambe was anxious. He had not submitted his master’s thesis and his supervisor, J.B. Joshi, generally decided where his students would go, which often was Reliance Industries. Surprisingly, after some intimidating remarks like ‘how could you attend the campus interview without asking me’, Joshi encouraged him to join Biocon. He did not conceal his cautionary advice though: ‘Come back after two years, finish your Ph.D and then we’ll see.
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