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Dr Swati A. Piramal is director of Piramal Healthcare and as President of ASSOCHAM, she is the first woman to ever head an Indian industry chamber. In 2006, she was awarded by the French government the Knight of the Order of Merit.

What does spirituality mean to you?
I do not tend to associate it to one religion in particular. My son-in-law is American, Protestant, and I love his religion, I love mine, I am interested in Buddhism and Sufism. So I tend to associate spirituality with a very broad idea of the universality of life ---we are actually all one--- and the idea that we ought to serve a higher goal than just ourselves. The idea of service to others is very important to me. I am a doctor, and it is inherent to my profession: how can I contribute to reduce the burden of disease? How can I help in some way? It is something I love doing.

How did you choose medicine?
I always knew I wanted to be a doctor. My family has been in the textile industry, for more than a hundred years, so I was a little bit of an aberration, but a good one. Because we began taking part in the pharmaceutical business and today it is one of our main ones. It is a business, but with the opportunity to serve. It is therefore very attractive to me --- there is a larger meaning than just the bottom line, and we are not creating some uninteresting, inanimate objects. And I actually feel that in this little pill, there is a lot of spirituality. Why? Because discovering it took years and years of some scientists’ life and it is being used by so many people. A very little thing can create so much healing. So to me, producing medicine itself is very spiritual.

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