When one meets pharma tycoon Pradeep Dadha at his plush home in Chennai, one can’t help but notice his enthusiasm for living life king size. “My goal has always been to be fair and ethical in business. We have established and maintained a reputation that allows us to do multi-crore deals on a handshake, and that’s important to me,” says the man who throws Chennai’s most awaited parties replete with flown-in gourmet delights served up at his in-house nightclub designed by an LA architect.
As for his achievements he isn’t too happy waxing eloquent about his pharma endeavours or multiple business interests, instead he shyly smiles, “I have had my share of highs, including ownership of my businesses, many years back, but my single greatest achievement would have to be the creation of my daughter, Rania, which of course, was the antecedent to my other great achievement, marrying Shubda.”
Today, Pradeep isn’t just a pharma honcho. “We have migrated away from being a pharma-centric concern and into a global, multi-vertical, operation. Jewellery, home furnishings, media are all within the scope of what we do currently,” says the man who is known for his annual masquerade ball. He recently brought Kimaya, the designer boutique to Chennai, with his wife Shubda.
“Shubda has always been very stylish and has great taste. It was natural for us to get involved with fashion. The Kimaya store was more or less an experiment, to let us get our feet wet in fashion. Our jewellery site is just launching as well as Stylosphere, a social network specifically designed for designers, models, photographers, choreographers, to meet and interact,” he says.
His home which is the talk of the town is his labour of love, he says. “Ananda from Pondicherry designed it. We told him to make it cool, chic and contemporary. We knew Ananda’s reputation for Zen ambiences, and we gave him the gardens and the nightclub, sort of as a clean canvas and told him to go for it. ” After a hard day at work, how does he unwind? “ It’s great to get lost in the gym for a couple of hours. Or just sit down with friends for a couple of drinks.”