Speakers

Peter Gassner is the visionary behind Veeva, one of the world’s most successful and innovative cloud software companies. He pioneered the industry cloud category when he founded Veeva in 2007 with the belief that vertical cloud software would be the next wave of cloud innovation. Today, Veeva helps more than 600 life sciences companies bring new medicines and treatments to patients faster. Peter serves on the board of directors of Veeva Systems, Guidewire Software, and Zoom Video Communications.

Arno Sosna is responsible for the strategic direction of all Veeva CRM products. Arno and his team ensure that Veeva delivers best-in-class products for managing customer engagement across all online and offline channels, with a focus on streamlined usability, rich functionality, and end-to-end customer success. He also represents Veeva as chief technology officer of Align Biopharma, an industry standards group dedicated to improving how healthcare providers engage life sciences companies.

Ankush is the head of Digital for Novartis India. He has 15 yrs+ of strategic and leadership experience in both global and country roles across organizations like Unilever, Novartis.
His contribution to his past and current assignments has been to design and build the digital blueprint for the organization, drive digital engagements & ROI & develop capabilities for sustainable future business models.
One of his current priorities is to accelerate the drive to omni channel transformation for Novartis in India focusing on digital and data driven transformation and prepare Novartis for delivering the future of HCP engagement.

As the Country President & Managing Director, Gagan is responsible for driving AstraZeneca’s science-led strategy in India.
Gagan started his journey in AstraZeneca in 2006 and held initial roles as a Business Director and later as Director Strategic Planning. Thereafter, he was promoted to the role of Vice President, Sales & Marketing – Cardiac and Diabetes. In 2012, Gagan was appointed as the Country President for AstraZeneca Philippines. Post a successful stint in this role, he moved to the United Kingdom as Global Head of Established Brands GI/CV.
Prior to AstraZeneca, Gagan has worked with Baxter India & Eli Lilly. Gagan holds a degree in Economics from the University of Delhi.

Sathya has been with Galderma, the world’s leading independent dermatology company for 20 years. He currently heads Galderma as the Managing Director-South Asia. In his last assignment he was with Galderma Philippines as President and Country Manager In his close to 32 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, he has also worked across various sales and marketing roles in Sun Pharma & Fulford Sathya is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI) – an organization representing the research-based pharmaceutical companies in India. He is currently the chairman of the OPPI HR Committee, Chairman of the OPPI OTC Committee, Co-Chairman of the OPPI Medical & Regulatory Committee. He is known for his capability in developing markets and is extremely passionate about building great teams. He empowers himself to lead the business with innovation and zeal. He firmly believes that people play a vital role in the success of an organization and hence is a keen driver of an impactful people strategy – a true example of “Leaders make Leaders.” He is leading Galderma India’s growth story by enabling Digital Transformation, Ecommerce, Commercial Excellence, and Innovation. Galderma India is growing by 50% YOY from last 3 years under the leadership of Mr. G. Sathya Narayanan. He is also working with Industry association and Government of India for the OTC Policy for the country, also involved in Regulatory Reforms in country. Mr. G. Sathya Narayanan is successfully leading Prescription, Consumer, Aesthetics and Exports business at Galderma India.

As Managing Director of Janssen India, Sarthak oversees the Company’s operations in India and the South Asian markets of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh & Nepal. Sarthak is a member of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) India President Council, as well as the Janssen Asia Pacific Leadership Team. Sarthak joined Janssen as General Manager – Marketing in 2007. He went on to hold a variety of roles with increasing responsibility, including leadership roles at regional and country level. From 2011-2014, he worked in the Janssen Asia Pacific Strategic Marketing team as Regional Commercial Director for Immunology, Metabolics and Established products and played a pivotal role in ensuring timely access to important medications for patients across the region. He later relocated to Japan to take on the role of Senior Director of Marketing for Immunology, Pain & Infectious Diseases, again increasing access to our medicines and in turn delivering significant growth for the business. In 2016, he returned to his home country, India, as Vice President – Established Products, Metabolics, Immunology and Dermatology. In this role, he led multiple programs aimed at bringing our transformational medical innovations to the country. With over 20 years’ pharmaceutical experience, Sarthak is a respected industry leader and currently Chairs the Western Region Committee of the American Chambers of Commerce (AMCHAM) and also Co-Chairs Pharma Committee in India. He is also a part of the National Executive Board of AMCHAM He is an Executive Council member of the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI) and Chairs Government Affairs Work Group and Rare Diseases Task Force. Sarthak holds a Master of Business Administration and a Bachelor of Pharmacy degree. He enjoys reading and bird photography in his spare time.

Dr. Swashraya Shah graduated in Medicine during the year 1989 and post-graduated in MD (Pharmacology) in 1995 from one of the premier institution of India – Grant Medical College, Sir J. J. Group of Hospitals, Mumbai. Recently, he has joined Bharat Serums & Vaccines Ltd as Chief Medical Officer in 2020. He has over twenty years of rich professional experience both in academic & clinical arena spread across various leading pharmaceutical companies for the country, region and global role.
Prior to this he worked for MSD Pharmaceuticals Pvt. Ltd. for ten years starting from October 2007 as Senior Director Medical Affairs & Alembic Pharmaceuticals Ltd in 2019. He has led the team of medical affairs with creative and innovative ideas to generate medical projects to improve patient outcomes and to support life cycle management of products in ethical and scientific manner. He was also Innovation Lead for MSD India. He has played a key role in the development of innovative programmes like Antimicrobial Stewardship, capacity building program on diabetes management (CCEBDM), which have not only helped to differentiate in front of customers and stakeholders, but also helped MSD gain number of external & internal recognition and business success. In 2013, he took on a short-term assignment with Epidemiology team in Merck Research Labs in US. During this assignment, he worked closely with the epidemiology team with focus to assess the dengue surveillance network for India.
Prior to joining MSD India, he was associated with AstraZeneca Singapore Pte Ltd as Area Medical Director SEA/ India. His role was to focus on enhancing/ leveraging the quality and scope of the medical function across SEA/ India as well as development of medical leadership to support other parts of the organization. He was instrumental in setting-up their clinical research team and involving India in their global drug development programs (Phase II to III trials).

As Country Manager, India Subcontinent, Anantha is responsible for all of Veeva’s operations and Customer Success in the region. Anantha has over 20 years of experience working in the Life Sciences Industry. Prior to joining Veeva, Anantha worked at RK SWAMY BBDO where he was responsible for enabling pharmaceutical companies design and adopt differentiated scientific communication strategies. Prior to RK SWAMY BBDO Anantha spent 11 years at Dr Reddy’s Labs in India where he was responsible for increasing sales management responsibilities.

Ramakrishna Rao (fondly known as RK) is the Senior Customer Success Manager for Veeva APAC. He is a seasoned pharmaceutical industry professional with almost two decades of experience and is currently leading customer success in the Asia Pacific market. With 20 years of managing cross-functional and cross-cultural teams, organizational complexities, and business uncertainties, RK has been integral in the success of many marquee initiatives at Veeva, Eli Lilly and Dr Reddy’s. RK has held diverse positions in Pharma & IT industries as a leader in Sales & Commercial Excellence, Market Research & Customer Success.

Ansh (AJ) is a Business Consultant specializing in Commercial Data Analytics, focusing on Pulse data analytics. He has a Master of Data Science from the University of Melbourne where he worked on Pharmaceutical sales data for his Master’s project. Before Veeva, AJ has 3 years of experience in pharmaceutical data analytics and has a Bachelor of Computer Science.

Sushant is senior strategy consultant at Veeva. He has diverse consulting experience helping life science companies with commercial, digital, and sales & marketing strategy. He has helped life science companies with future commercial strategy, licensing and acquisition, market segmentation and forecasting, market research, brand management, and commercial analytics. Prior to Veeva, Sushant was a consultant at ZS Associates, and Trinity Partners. Sushant holds an MBA in marketing, and an engineering degree in computer science.

Michael has over 15 years of experience in enterprise software implementations and he currently leads the Veeva Training Services team across Asia (APAC, Korea, Japan and China). Michael joined Veeva 6 years ago and he implemented a number of key Vault projects across Asia prior to leading the Training Services team. Within the training team, Michael is heavily involved in ensuring courses are delivered effectively with excellent learner engagement.

As the Senior Director of Product Management for Events, Krista is focused on defining the product direction for Veeva’s Events Management and Engage for Events products. Throughout her nine-year tenure at Veeva, Krista has been an integral part of the CRM product team responsible for the design and delivery of key features related to call reporting, sampling, compliance, and now events. Krista has 20 years of experience in the life sciences industry on the commercial side beginning her career in sample accountability and compliance services before transitioning over to product management.

Emma Hyland heads up the European Commercial Content Strategy team, where she leads Veeva’s market strategy and key customer and partner collaborations to advance the life sciences industry in the areas of content strategy and digital transformation. With 17-years experience in the life sciences industry, Emma spent 10 years in the management team at Zinc Ahead Ltd, delivering compliance software to the global pharmaceutical industry. Emma started her career in healthcare communications with roles at Ketchum and Affiniti developing and executing on award winning campaigns in respiratory and cardiovascular therapy areas. Emma proudly represented Zinc Ahead as a recipient of the Queens Award for Enterprise in 2015 meeting the Queen and Prince Phillip at Buckingham Palace. Emma holds a bachelor of science degree in Biochemistry and Biomedical Physics from the University of Nottingham.

Ketaki is a fair flavoured Veevan for 1.2 years as a Solution Consultant, and an overall Software and Cloud space experience of over 7 years. Based out of Pune (currently), Ketaki looks forward to supporting customers all over India and APAC, with a keen focus on Veeva Commercial Suite. Her focus is majorly to enable APAC customers, and India as a Market, to be able to effectively plan and use the software to address business challenges with optimised solutions and business outcomes.

Emma joined Veeva in 2019 and is responsible for the design, development and delivery of Veeva PromoMats capabilities. She is passionate about understanding the needs of the customer and making products that meet customer needs, drive speed and efficiencies. Prior to Veeva, she spent over 10 years working in the tech retail industry for global companies designing and building products to help drive repeat sales and build loyalty to the brand. She has a BSc in Natural Sciences from Durham University, UK.

Belinda (Bel) Neville is Veeva’s Customer Success Manager for PromoMats & MedComms in APAC, working with customers to ensure they receive the most value from your existing Veeva investments. Bel has a background in product marketing within life sciences and is passionate about using data from digital channels to improve the customer journey and produce meaningful results. If you’re interested in optimising your digital asset management, please reach out to belinda.neville@veeva.com to discuss.

Daniel is a Principal in Veeva’s Business Consulting practice and has held commercial leadership roles in the Biopharma sector for more than 20 years. He has led global launches and driven product growth strategies at JNJ, Novartis, AbbVie and Amgen, using customer insights, technology & data to identify growth opportunities and maximise commercial and patient outcomes. Most recently in his role as Head of Commercial Excellence for Amgen ANZ Daniel lead the development of opportunity-based customer segmentation and practice management models across Amgen’s primary care and specialty businesses. Daniel is an advocate for equipping clients with the capabilities to succeed in the “new normal”, placing HCPs & patients at the centre of commercial & medical strategy, and using data and analytics to create value for their customers and patients. Daniel holds a BSc in Pharmacology and Physiology from Monash University.

As CRM Strategy Director for Asia, Stephen is responsible for ownership of the strategy and direction for Veeva’s CRM product suite, including core multichannel capabilities as well as the Events Management, Align and Engage products. Stephen has been in several roles during Veeva’s growth in the Asia Pacific region, including most recently, Solution Consulting Director APAC. Stephen has worked in enterprise software since 1998, in both consulting and technical sales roles. He spent 5 years at PeopleSoft working in the UK, New Zealand and Australia. He first started working with salesforce.com in 2006, and provided early technical consulting on it’s product capabilities in UK and Australia. In 2010 Stephen joined Veeva as the first employee in the APAC region. Stephen holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Auckland University.

As Senior Director, Product Management Commercial Cloud, Giorgio is responsible for the definition and prioritisation of the roadmap for all Veeva CRM products, ensuring that Veeva delivers the best-in-class solution for the APAC region. Giorgio also supports the growth of the region and the expansion in new emerging markets, investigating and understanding the nuances of each country. Giorgio has worked in the pharma industry for over 13 years, evolving from a leadership role in EMEA support, to Professional Services to Product Management. He has managed regional and global CRM implementations for enterprise customers in both Rx and OTC at Veeva. Prior to joining Veeva in 2012, Giorgio worked at Eli Lilly as an external consultant for 9 years, leading their Regional Support CoE out of Italy and building knowledge in Clinical Operations, Global Product Safety, MedInfo, Sales and Marketing.

As customer success manager for a number of clients in the APAC region, Deepa ensures that clients understand the value proposition that various Veeva modules offer and are able to leverage them to their maximum. Her primary responsibility is to ensure that Veeva is well adopted by users. She also keeps clients abreast of best practise and release education through one to one sessions.

As Service Engagement Manager for a large number of clients in the APAC region, Adrien help customers transform their vision in an actionable project plan. One of his key focus is to make sure that customers continue to drive innovation with Veeva Managed Services, our post implementation ongoing consultancy service. Adrien has been helping customers implement CRM solutions for more than 10 years and joined Veeva 4 years ago.

As a senior consultant in Veeva for almost 5 years, Noel has been involved in the delivery of many Veeva CRM rollouts – from smaller essentials CRM to large global implementations. Noel currently leads the innovation of Veeva CRM MyInsights in APAC – to empower field users with easy to use, actionable reports and visualisations. Noel has deep experience in many of the CRM modules including key account management, order management, and multichannel, and has expertise in the technical space such as system architecture, customisations and integrations. Prior to Veeva, Noel was in professional Services at IBM’s salesforce.com arm for several years. Prior to IBM, Noel was part of a product team at Oracle to design, build, and support product releases.