Ajay Piramal is, yet again, buying to build. The last time, he bought physical assets. This time, he’s investing in intellectual property, and the hard work begins now, reports Deepali Gupta     It’s the nineties show again at Piramal Healthcare. The 17,000 crore that Ajay Piramal earned for the company in September 2010 by selling its drug-formulations business was built on acquisitions big and small. He is now deploying that cash pile and, once again, he is buying pharmaceutical assets to build. But there’s a difference, a crucial one, in what Piramal is buying. If the nineties were about establishing linkages to make and sell copycat drugs, his initial flourishes of what could be another buying spree is about adding intellectual property. “Our new vision is owning intellectual property and converting it to products,” says chairman Ajay Piramal. If the physical manifestation of the first buying binge was functional factories and trav...