K. Anji Reddy, the founder of Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd. (DRRD), India’s second-largest drugmaker, died Friday after “ailing for some time,” the company said. The cause of death wasn’t given in a statement released by Dr. Reddy’s late on March 15. Reddy, a billionaire, died of liver cancer at the Apollo Hospital in Hyderabad, the Indian Express reported, without saying where it got the information. “We deeply regret the demise of our beloved Founder- Chairman,” the company said in a black entry page to its website, bearing the message and a photograph of Reddy, whose year of birth was given as 1941. “May his soul rest in peace.” A chemical engineer, Reddy founded his namesake company in 1984, according to the statement. He started funding research with an investment of 60 million rupees ($1.1 million) in 1993 with the goal of making the Hyderabad-based company the first Indian firm to create a drug and sell it globally, Reddy said in an interview in 2006 in which he said he was born in 1939. For the first time, he missed the company’s annual shareholder meeting last July, leading to speculation about his retirement, Forbes said on its website in a profile of Reddy. He had earlier stepped down from an active executive role at the company, which is now managed by his son Satish Reddy, who is managing director, and son-in-law G.V. Prasad, who is vice chairman and chief executive officer. “The second line of management that he had created is good enough to take the company forward,” said Surya Narayan Patra, an analyst at Systematix Shares & Stocks Ltd. in Mumbai.
