The Ranbaxy Brothers Who Went From Billionaires to Jail

In 2018, inside a farmhouse in Delhi, two brothers who together had once been worth billions of dollars reportedly got into a physical altercation. The details of what happened in that room have never been fully established — but the consequences were. The Malvinder and Shivinder Singh who came out of it were no longer a partnership. The investigations, the court cases, and the arrests that followed would all play out in the open. The family was already broken long before any of that. What you'll find out in this episode: → What they inherited. Bhai Mohan Singh built Ranbaxy in the 1960s from a small pharmaceutical trading business into India's largest generic drug manufacturer — a company that supplied medicines to markets across the world. His son Parvinder Singh took Ranbaxy further: into global generics, research, and manufacturing scale that made it one of Asia's most significant pharmaceutical companies. By the time Malvinder and Shivinder Singh — the grandsons — took effective control in the early 2000s, they were the custodians of something it had taken two generations of genuine skill and effort to build. They had not built it. They had been handed it. → The $4.6 billion exit. In 2008, Malvinder and Shivinder Singh sold their controlling stake in Ranbaxy to Japan's Daiichi Sankyo for approximately $2 billion — a deal that valued the entire company at around $4.6 billion. At the time, it was one of the largest-ever acquisitions of an Indian company by a foreign buyer. The brothers walked away with billions in hand. The question that would define the next decade was what they knew about Ranbaxy's problems when they signed the papers. → Fortis, Religare, and what followed. The brothers deployed the proceeds into a new empire: Fortis Healthcare, a chain of hospitals that expanded aggressively across India and Southeast Asia, and Religare Enterprises, a financial services company spanning broking, lending, and insurance. Both ventures were built on significant debt and leverage. Fund-diversion allegations emerged in investigations by the Delhi Police Economic Offences Wing, which alleged that funds from Fortis and Religare had been routed through a complex web of entities and loans. The exact disposition of the money — including substantial amounts allegedly linked to the Radha Soami Satsang Beas sect, allegations that are disputed and in which no conviction of the sect's leadership has been handed down — became the subject of multiple ongoing court proceedings. → What Daiichi found. After completing the acquisition, Daiichi Sankyo discovered that Ranbaxy had been concealing serious data-integrity and drug-quality violations from the US Food and Drug Administration. These problems ultimately resulted in a $500 million penalty against Ranbaxy in 2013 — one of the largest FDA fines ever imposed at that time. Daiichi alleged that the Singh brothers had knowledge of these violations and had concealed them during the sale negotiations. An international arbitration tribunal awarded Daiichi approximately ₹3,500 crore in damages against the brothers in 2016. The exit that had once looked like a triumph now looked very different. → 2019. Malvinder and Shivinder Singh were arrested by the Delhi Police Economic Offences Wing on allegations of fraud and criminal breach of trust related to Religare and Fortis. Both spent time in Tihar Jail. The brothers, who had reportedly stopped speaking to each other since the 2018 altercation, now faced the courts as separate defendants. Fortis Healthcare was eventually acquired by new management. Religare was restructured. The Ranbaxy name had long since been absorbed into the Daiichi merger and then sold on. Two generations of building, gone in under a decade. India's Richest is your front row seat to the Game of Thrones of India's wealthiest families. New episodes every day. 🔔 Subscribe and turn on notifications — new episodes every day. #indianeconomy #businessdocumentary #billionairemindset #entrepreneurship #indiarising #businessscandal #indiadocumentary #pharmaceuticalindustry #LuxuryLifestyle #BillionaireLifestyle #Wealth #BusinessScandals