Shah was a member of the first batch of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), which graduated in 1966.
Divya Rajgopal, writing for The Economic Times, notes that:[4]Shah and the IPA became the body that resisted the Intellectual Property Rights that lower income countries like India were forced to sign under the World Trade Organisation's TRIPS agreement.
Shah, few pharma industry veterans recall was at times even more powerful than the Indian CEO's whose interests he represented to the bureaucrats and ministers in Delhi.With the IPA, Shah helped Indian companies communicate with the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) and contributed "in the shaping of the current Indian patent law, which favours affordable medicines, while also recognising the obligations under the TRIPS agreement".
He was the Chair of the International Generic Pharmaceutical Alliance (IGPA) for two terms in 2005-07 and 2010-11,[6] a Non-Executive Independent Director of Fresenius Kabi Oncology Limited (formerly Dabur Pharma Limited), an Independent Non-Executive Director at Anuh Pharma Ltd. (October 2007-February 2019), a member of the advisory panel for PharmaGenerics UK, an Additional Director of Lyka Labs Ltd. (from July 2008 to April 2009), an editor for the Journal of Generics Medicines, and a guest faculty for the Management Development Programmes at his alma mater IIMA.
[7] The "DG Shah Award for best Public Policy Paper" at IIMA was posthumously established in his name.