CEO Insights Magazine

With the Indian Pharmaceutical sector supplying over 50 percent of global demand for various vaccines, India has emerged as one of the largest providers of generic drugs universally. The mammoth segment is commanded by some impeccable leaders who are pragmatically engaged to navigate its course to greater summits and one such persona is Rajesh Salwan (COO, Solara Active Pharma Science). With a professional journey spanning over 30 years in the domain of pharmaceutical and briefly across the grochemical segment, Rajesh has been able to cement his identity as an extraordinary chemical engineer having a firm grasp over chemical, biochemical, and fermentation synthesis. Apart from the Agro chemical sector, Rajesh has also been working across the thriving biotechnology space for the last 12-15 years. Internationally acknowledged for his proficiency in chemical Biotechnology synthesis, Rajesh holds a prolific experience of working with various global conglomerates from Southeast Asia, Europe, Singapore, Mexico & China, Before joining Solara Active Pharma Sciences as COO, Member of Executive Management team, located in Netherlands and Board member for the Indian entity. Rajesh holds a prolific Global Pharmaceutical Operations management and leadership experience. He enjoys strategic as well as analytical assignments and comes with strong execution skills via which he has led some noteworthy transformation journeys through out his career.

Rajesh engages in an exclusive interaction with CEO Insights.

Describe your present role and the main vision you carry as an industry leader?
Majorly functioning in the core operation side, I love being in operations, which is quite a widespread arena. In this segment I take care of the manufacturing, supply chain, sourcing, regulatory affairs, technology and large capital projects. Organization’s buy, build, and ship components of the business goes through me. Largely operating in the biotechnology sphere, my focus stays on sustainability. We are responsible for today and our acts today is

future for the upcoming generations. If our present activities are not done with focus on Sustainability, especially by giving weight age to the Eco footprints and environment friendly chemistry, we cannot hand over a clean & green future to our next generation. In nutshell, we can’t be successful in a society that fails. So, merged together, this is my vision and mission, and I stay passionate for the same

What are the latest technologies you have helped the company to adopt? What is the gap you helped it bridge through these technological acquisitions?
The industry of chemical engineering is changing very fast and so is the (increasing) domain of biotechnology. ‘Green chemistry’ is becoming a buzzword, I can give you one classical example of its importance with reference to a product, Amoxicillin. Augmentin (Amox-Clav) by GSK is one of the highest sold brands in the world of pharmaceuticals. A 1960 product that surfaced out after the second world war as downstream of Penicillin, Amoxicillin is sold out as an antibiotic across human & veterinary segments. Today, we see a migration that happened from chemical synthesis of manufacturing to green chemistry and the eco foot prints are remarkably improved over here. The greenhouse gas emissions coupled with energy and water consumption broadly can result in 50 percent less eco footprint burden compared to the chemical synthesis. Personally, executing this migration across Antibiotics and Cardiovascular segments through a large part of my professional career gives me a feel of satisfaction and pride and now in Solara Active Pharma Science. Here we are also looking into novel products with green chemistry routes that we can introduce in our upcoming product development pipeline.

Share about Solara Active Pharma Sciences'role in the Pharmaceutical industry and how it's making a mark for itself?
A leading Indian Pharmaceutical Manufacturing company, Solara

Active Pharma Science is well poised for the future. Having worked for long years in China, I can tell you with a strong conviction that India is well placed with respect to China thanks to two basic things, which is the language and compliance attitude. The visceral regulators often find India to be a bit more comfortable to interact with and see the translation of their request or demand or expectations. I am pleased with its focus on the existing product portfolio, which has got around +76 percent presence in the regulated market, this is quite a boon for any pharma company to have such large presence in the regulated market like the US, Europe, Japan and Oceana. The leadership of our company is focused broadly on two components performance and growth. Our present performance has a strong focus on continual improvements that should have the best conversions and yield the lowest raw material costs. In same breath, growth is focused with new products coming with novel route of synthesis.

For the next few years, what is the kind of role you have envisioned yourself to be shouldering?
Equipped with a very strong team, we are focused on aggressive future growth. I'm super excited about the chemistry shift, which is happening to biocatalyst and fermentation, and my previous experience also comes from that particular expertise. I am also equally enthusiastic about the digital transformation and the smart manufacturing that will be the future of Solara Active Pharma Science and will also decide the course of the pharma segment, especially for Indian Pharma companies to stay ahead of global peers.

Rajesh Salwan, Chief Operating Office, Solara Active Pharma Sciences
Before joining Solara Active Pharma Sciences, Member of Executive Management team, located in Netherlands and Board member for the Indian entity, Rajesh holds a prolific Global Pharmaceutical Operations management and leadership experience. He enjoys strategic as well as analytical assignments and comes with strong execution skills via which he has led some noteworthy transformation journeys throughout his career.

Hobbies:Cricket and Listening Sufi songs
Favorite Food:Punjabi
Favorite Book:'Good to Great', book by Jim Collins
Favorite Travel Destination:Spain

Awards and recognitions:
(i)'Green Manufacturing Award'by European Manufacturing Summit 2010.
(ii)'Leadership Award' by Hong Kong University on Sustainability aspects in 2012.
(iii)Lean Six Sigma Black Belt