Articles by Anup Soans

Q 1. Tell us about your journey as a pharma entrepreneur and what made you venture into pharma and stay on in pharma?

My journey started with two good decisions, one- to be a Medical Representative (MR) in Mumbai, which built a strong foundation and the other, to join Helios, a new pharma company, which was like a baptism of fire. Together, they molded me well.

I was promoted as a Front Line Manager (FLM) within a year. And after spending four excellent years in Helios, I joined Group Pharma as Product Manager (PM) and ever since, it’s been an exciting learning experience. 

I was exposed to Pharma very early in life as my dad was in J L Morison, as part of the promoter-team of Warren Pharma. At home, I was the designated telephone operator and order processing clerk. Those were the days of trunk-calls – calling managers and distributors to note down orders. Hence, I was exposed to the excitement of targets, achievements, deficits and campaigns very early in my life. The idea of ‘work-life balance’ was not in vogue. One would look to their parents who worked long hours with pride making it something you wanted to emulate. Things have changed a lot but I would not trade the decision I made, to get into and stay in Pharma.

Strategy and strategic planning are perhaps the most hyped-up words in business. One approaches strategy, as if entering the sanctum sanctorum of business management, thanks to business gurus and management consultancies that sell permutations and combinations of the same strategies to as many companies as their business development team manages…

In a World Economic Forum talk, Professor Sumantra Ghosal – the founding Dean of the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad – talked about the “Smell of the Workplace” as a metaphor to describe the need for creating a new context that enables employees to change their mindset from that of Constraint, Compliance, Control and Contract to that of Stretch, Discipline, Trust and Support.