Biocon now has a successor.

Founder Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw announced that her niece, Claire Mazumdar, will gradually transition into her role at the company. Mazumdar-Shaw, who has led Biocon since founding it in 1978, is preparing for the next phase of leadership.

“Claire will transition into my role at the right time, so not planning to hang up my boots just yet!” Mazumdar-Shaw wrote on X on Tuesday, confirming that her niece will eventually lead the company she built over four decades into its next phase of global expansion.

Claire Mazumdar, 37, is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Bicara Therapeutics, a Nasdaq-listed cancer therapy company she founded in 2018, which was incubated by Biocon. Bicara is focused on bispecific antibodies, an emerging class of targeted cancer therapies, and was listed on Nasdaq in 2024.

Before founding Bicara, she led business development and corporate strategy at Rheos Medicines, where she worked on a partnership with Roche. She was also a senior associate at Third Rock Ventures, focusing on company formation and business development.

She holds a degree in Biological Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a PhD in cancer biology from Stanford School of Medicine. Her research in tumour immunology and cancer epigenetics has been published in journals such as Nature, Cell Stem Cell and Cancer Cell. She also sits on the boards of Relay Therapeutics and Noora Health.

Her parents are both computer science professors in the United States. Her brother, Eric Mazumdar, is a professor at the California Institute of Technology and works in artificial intelligence.

Mazumdar-Shaw built Biocon from a garage in Bengaluru with ₹10,000 into India’s largest biotechnology company over four decades. She has no children.

Published on: May 5, 2026 3:39 PM IST