The Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club (EVC) at the ISB launched its first activity of the year with an ‘Icon Speaker Series’. Invited to this debut event was Habil Khorakiwala, Chairman Wockhardt.

Khorakiwala presented a brief background about Wockhardt, which, he mentioned, was a leading company in pharmaceutical and biotechnology in India. He added that as a group, Wockhardt spans the entire spectrum of healthcare and is a truly global company.

“Time between thought and action is decreasing rapidly in today’s increasingly competitive world, and Wockhardt is cognizant of this fact,” said Khorakiwala. “With about 1000 standard operating procedures that have been laid down, it becomes easy for Wockhardt to setup new hospitals and expand quickly. From concept to execution, the cycle is never longer than 90 days,” he added.

Khorakiwala also spoke about the importance of constant innovation as a differentiating factor to maintain a competitive edge in business and related it to the technological advancements in hip replacements done by the Wockhardt team. Explaining what gave Wockhardt hospitals its competitive advantage, he mentioned about their unique positioning as ‘tertiary care specialty hospitals’. “This acts as an advantage because there are not too many players in this segment,” he shared.

On identifying opportunities and decision making, Khorakiwala drew from Wockhardt’s rationale behind their expansion into biotech from the traditional pharmaceutical industry. He said, “It is important to mix the known and the unknown in order to minimise business risk. This can be done by leveraging on existing skills to expand in new areas.” He shared the example that since the customers were common to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, and as Wockhardt already had expertise in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology became a logical next step in its expansion plan.

Ending the session on a more personal note, Khorakiwala stressed on the importance of perseverance. He reminisced how the first ten years as entrepreneur were the most difficult for him. “Wockhardt started as a small pharmaceutical company with a small field force in Mumbai. Today it is a state of the art FDA approved facility which supplies medicines to the US,” - that was some inspiration for the would-be entrepreneurs at the ISB.