How many of you can honestly say that a one-hour conversation changed the entire course of your life?
In May 1983, Balagopal Chandrasekhar visited the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences & Technology in Thiruvananthapuram out of curiosity after reading news reports that its research and development (R&D) wing had indigenously developed blood bags to facilitate blood transfers.
At the time, he was a 30-year-old officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).
There he met Professor AV Ramani, who at the time was heading the institute’s R&D wing. It was a serendipitous meeting, but the conversation that followed inspired Balagopal to quit the IAS a few months later and start his own venture Penpol (Peninsula Polymers) Limited. In 1999, Penpol entered into a joint venture with the Terumo Corporation of Japan. Today, Terumo Penpol Ltd is the biggest manufacturer of blood bags in India and one of the world’s biggest makers of high-tech bio-medical devices.
So, what…
