Frontlines is an IYHP initiative covering interesting career trajectories from the world of healthcare.
In this edition, we speak with Anuj Shah. Anuj currently works in the medical devices industry leading international expansion for Healthium, an Apax portfolio company. He has previously worked across pharmaceuticals and consulting between India, US, and Sri Lanka, and received his first degree in engineering and graduate management training at IIT and Harvard Business School respectively.
What’s your story, Anuj? I like to say, ‘My story is yet to start!’ Born in a Gujarati family, I had envisioned a career in finance, but found myself in engineering by accident. Upon graduation, as I ventured into the world of management and later healthcare, I discovered a deep passion for running businesses and for healthcare. As I look ahead, I’m excited to build a career in healthcare and hopefully be a founder someday. It feels like healthcare chose me, and I hope to create a significant impact in healthcare in the future. What were your influences growing up? What influenced you to take up engineering? I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. My father is a firm believer in the value of apprenticeship over overly-academic education for learning. He started his own textile processing business, and in his second life helped private sector banks source clients for their lending business in the early 2000s when the Indian banking sector had just started getting privatized. My mother, who is a Chartered Accountant, on the other hand, has been instrumental in expanding our family’s accounting firm and taking ahead my grandfather’s legacy. Despite business being a dinner table conversation, I chose the unconventional path and pursued engineering at IIT Bombay, primarily following my deep interest in mathematics and a yearning to find my own passion, like my parents had. Tell us about your time at IIT IIT was all about discovering and learning — both personally and about the world! I majored in Civil Engineering at IIT Bombay. My penchant for discovery, and the flexibility at IIT helped me get a “better rounded” education: pursuing several courses in management and economics, and meeting Professors who became mentors for life. Outside the classroom, IIT played a major role in building out my character and leadership potential. One of my fondest experiences was leading a team of fellow undergraduates to run a student-led recruitment and placement team. It helped me understand how to drive and motivate people in a more nuanced manner. My summers were spent exploring the professional world. From financial advisory at Deloitte to sitting at a trading desk at HDFC Securities and writing code with techies at Goldman, I tried my hand at several different things. I left IIT knowing that I enjoyed solving problems, working on the business side of things and understanding how companies are run, in hopes of running my own, some day. This led me to join Kearney as a consultant after graduation. How was your experience working with Kearney? I was recruited by Kearney as a BA in their generalist practice. I enjoyed working with some of the sharpest (and nicest) people, trying to solve tough problems across industries. It was like a crash course in learning to quickly learn about industries. My greatest learning there was how to influence key decision makers in an organization. During a year-long EBITDA enhancement engagement with a very traditional promoter-led business — I was able to see just how much value our team was able to deliver — most of it by actually implementing our recommendations. I learned that the toughest job in consulting was not problem-solving, but the art of influencing stakeholders to drive change. Getting people to believe in you over conventional wisdom is hard, and getting people to then change their ways — even harder. I understood that this is an essential skill for a good CEO. How did the transition to Abboott happen? The short answer — a well-structured two year program and one conversation with Rehan (then MD, Abbott India) led to all of it. As I thought about pursuing roles which involved driving operational change, I found the role at Abbott very appealing — a combination of getting a bird’s eye view from the CEO’s office for a year followed by a meaningful stint in a business unit / function of interest. Working for a few months as Rehan’s Chief of Staff was nothing short of a crash course in leadership and strategy. He had built a high-performing and might I say, unconventional, leadership team (nothing similar to other pharma companies) with leaders from very diverse backgrounds. With that team and a razor-sharp focus on culture, Abbott consistently beat internal and external benchmarks. Rehan often said “If you just follow the market leader, how do you beat them?” Under his helm, Abbott grew 1.5–2x the market, year on year. And I just soaked it all. That’s interesting. Tell us more about your Abbott experience and how you found yourself shipped to the island nation? As I was inching towards completing a year in Abbott, Rehan asked if I would be interested to run Abbott’s Sri Lanka business that had been witnessing flattish growth and needed a “booster”. I was excited and nervous at being presented this opportunity and a month later, I relocated to Colombo, Sri Lanka. When I landed there, in my first meeting, two things became quite clear — I was working alongside a highly-distinguished and tenured group of executives and that if I wanted to grow sales and become a people leader — learning the local language was going to be critical. These were new challenges, and I folded my sleeves to quickly address them which greatly helped me in my engagements with doctors and also helped me gain acceptance of the 45-member team. All in all, it was a really interesting experience, and I left Sri Lanka having delivered well on my mandate, but more importantly after creating bonds with the team, who had become family. The experience taught me about people management, driving change in an organization, and working in a different country. How was HBS? At HBS, I was able to develop critical thinking skills while gaining invaluable perspectives on a plethora of global topics from politics and business to culture — we had it all. HBS’s case method is designed to make students talk for majority of the class and learn from each other. It makes you learn to think quickly on your feet and at the same time also present your opinion in a concise and structured manner. As I look back, this skill has come in so handy to me when I’m in team or boardroom discussions. HBS also played a critical role in furthering my interest in healthcare and in pursuing an operating career going forward. I was an active member of the HBS Healthcare Club, took healthcare-focused coursework, and interned with McKinsey’s Healthcare Practice, where I served clients across health insurance and medical technology. How did India become a part of the matrix again? The decision to come back to India was not a quick and easy one. There was always a desire to come back and create impact in India but the timing was unclear. During my second year at HBS, I visited India and I met with mentors, investors at leading VC and PE funds and founders to understand what an “ideal next step” would be for a professional who hoped to be a founder/ entrepreneur in India both from an experience and capital raising point of view. They emphasized that while I had the strategy background and experience, to become a great founder in India, I needed to have on-ground operating experience in India first. This led me to return to India and begin my role at Healthium. Talk to us more about your role at Healthium In one of our first few interactions, I distinctly remember our CEO, Anish Bafna, asking me why I should be entrusted with the responsibility of handling sales for Healthium in Southeast Asia, given I had neither a background in sales, nor the experience of the Southeast Asian market. I humbly requested him to bet on my ability to work hard and drive to learn. Fortunately for me, he agreed to not only do so but he was also kind enough to hand-hold me for the first few months, often traveling with me to key markets, and lending his personal contacts across various Asian markets. The Healthium journey has been critical in building my business development muscle and gaining a first-handing understanding of numerous healthcare markets and systems across the world. Over the past four years, along with Healthium’s growth, my personal responsibilities have also grown. Today, I am responsible for our sales across Asia, Europe and North America and am building a global team across the world. It has been nothing short of an exciting journey that continues to provide new learnings everyday. What are your thoughts on the medical devices industry in India? I expect the industry to follow a trajectory similar to that of the pharmaceutical industry over the next two decades. With a focus on quality manufacturing in India and selling globally, the industry has the potential to be one of the top exporters. Indian medical devices are increasingly gaining hold in key international geographies, and I believe we can potentially witness a robust year-on-year growth in this industry over the next decade with the right government policies and incentives. What is IYHP for you? One word: Brilliant. I have engaged with the community for several of my market queries, have hired people from this community and have always been impressed by how much this community has to offer. The quality of folks is top notch. I also look forward to Dispensary for my weekly dose of healthcare updates. I am now looking forward to the IYHP Dinner in Bangalore in the coming days.
This session was covered by Rajat Garg, with ideas and inputs from Aditya Mehta and Konapur Rahul. India Young Healthcare Professionals (IYHP) is an India-based professional organisation established in 2020 to bring together emerging leaders from different healthcare domains on a common platform to solve and innovate for India Healthcare. IYHP facilitates this through its eight flagship initiatives which empower young professionals to lead by action and make an impact in India healthcare. Our community of 2,000+ members, with an average age of 26, comes from 25+ states and 100+ cities, represents every sector within healthcare from medical devices and pharma to public health and healthcare policy, and is committed to driving change in the way healthcare is experienced in India. To learn more, visit www.iyhp.org.