Pharma GCCs: From Cost to Capability

Q1. Could you start by giving us a brief overview of your professional background, particularly focusing on your expertise in the industry?

My career spans nearly three decades and four very different organisational contexts — TCS, Cognizant, Accenture, Novartis, and now as a freelance consultant and each chapter added a layer, perspective and an experience that the previous one simply could not have given me. I started as a hands-on technologist in the late nineties, got deep into test engineering and quality assurance when nobody was calling it "strategic," and then progressively moved into running large global delivery organisations.

At Accenture, I was operating at VP level, leading testing and technology programme delivery across some of the most complex enterprise transformations in telecom and financial services. I turned around a 220-person Testing Centre of Excellence that was running at a minus five percent margin and brought it to a sustained thirty percent-plus. That experience is probably the one that shaped how I think about delivery discipline and commercial accountability more than any certification or MBA could teach you.

Moving into a Pharma giant, when I was reached out to, was a deliberate pivot toward industry, and it is where my…