SUNIL KHURANA
Years 2020 and 2021 will be remembered in the history as the greatest learning for humankind.
What was the rationale behind your career move towards being one of the Med-tech influential leader?
Having spent almost 3 decades in Healthcare, specifically Medical Device industry, I wanted to create an Indian multinational company in this space. That is what motivated me to join BPL Medical Technologies as CEO & MD in 2013. BPL Medical Technologies has come a long way in terms of products and service offerings. We are thankful to our customers and employees who have supported us in this journey with their trust and confidence. As I look forward, we are headed towards exciting times, as the focus of Government coupled with growing demand for improving affordable Healthcare in India will pave way for unchartered territories for many companies.
How has the current situation changed the face of medical devices industry and what is its growth prospects in the coming years?
Years 2020 and 2021 will be remembered in the history as the greatest learning for humankind. Across the globe we have seen a huge disruption of mobility and greatest adoption of digital tools. It has been a challenging year as the Healthcare sector across the globe which has been pushed to the brink in terms of overburden of patient load and having to deal with a highly infectious virus. Healthcare will remain in focus and mainstream of discussions be it Healthcare delivery, Pharmaceuticals or Medical Devices throughout 2021 At BPL Medical Technologies, we have been always focused on developing products with Indian customers and ecosystem in mind and we will continue this roadmap in 2021 to develop new products to better suit the requirements of our country.
These unprecedented times affected the healthcare industry to its core. How is the Med Tech industry contributing to help patient care?
We at BPL Medical Technologies always strive to serve the humankind with utmost respect and care. Hence, we work on upgrading ourselves to new technologies which intern help us in improving lives. we have a well-diversified portfolio of product offerings which cater to most of their needs. Our continuously expanding network of sales and service manpower ensure timely support to our customers across remotest parts of our large country. We also see a huge opportunity to export our products to neighboring countries and have made significant progress in terms of registering our products in several developing countries and are focusing on expanding our business in these geographies.
What is your key learning during this unprecedented time?
I think the key learning is to be agile as an organization which has helped us an organization. In my 30 years of career in
Med Tech industry I could have never imagined any company in our industry adapting to Work From Home (WFH). We have adapted to newer ways of working and staying connected with our customer. Moreover, we have been able to work effectively with Government to find solutions to tackle this pandemic better. Our subsidiary Penlon, has supplied more than 11,000 emergency ventilators to the UK government last year and this year BPL Medical is working very closely with a large PSU to supply Oxygen Concentrators to Central and State Government. All this has been possible as we have been very agile and quick to respond to the crisis.
What are your future endeavors to the medical industry as a leading Med Tech innovator?
India as a country lacks the fundamentals of product innovation but we are good in innovating solutions. In the Med Tech space we will see innovation on the service and solution side. We also aspire to be a solution provider for our customers problems so that we can help them achieve lower cost of ownership for their Medical Devices. I think this pandemic has improved the financial position for a lot of companies so we will see some innovations coming from this sector. Hopefully, we should see large players evolving in the Medical Devices space from this pandemic to make this sector truly Atma Nirbhar in years to come.
A brief about yourself and your organization.
BPL Medical Technologies Pvt. Ltd., erstwhile Medical Devices Business division of BPL Limited (a company promoted by visionary Mr. TPG Nambiar) has been a pioneer in the Indian medical devices space since 1967. It developed and manufactured India’s first ECG device, first in-hospital defibrillator & public access defibrillator. BPL Medical has its registered office and head office located in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. In 2013, the Medical Devices Business division was carved out of BPL Limited into BPL, Medical through business transfer following which Goldman Sachs invested into BPL Medical as a majority shareholder.