A Technology Fast 500 success storyAchieving the ranking four years in a row |
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The Bionic Woman: Anu Acharya
The Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific CEO Survey is filled with a wide-range of interesting companies, run by extraordinary leaders. Anu Acharya is one of them. As CEO of Ocimum Biosolutions, a life sciences research and development enabling company, Acharya has helped it achieve the Deloitte Technology Asia Pacific Fast 500 for four years in a row. With her at the helm it has also generated honors including the "Fastest Growing Life Sciences Company in India" and the "IT Innovation Award" from NASSCOM. She is a regular at technology forums and roundtables and as an entrepreneur has been named one of the "25 Tech Titans under 35" by Red Herring Magazine.
The India, US and Netherlands-based Ocimum Biosolutions was founded in 2000 with two other partners, Subash Lingareddy and Dr. Sujata Pammi on an idea to create a global firm that was able to provide outsourcing help to the Pharma and biotech industries. The company currently counts the top 25 Pharma companies, research institutes and emerging biotech companies throughout the world as partners who use Ocimum's expertise to assist them in understanding the underlying mechanisms of diseases and the discovery and prioritization of gene targets and biomarkers.
Acharya sees her biggest leadership challenge as trying to find the delicate balance between growth and profitability. "We are in an industry that is rapidly evolving, but not yet large enough. The company has over 2000 customers throughout the world and operates with three main business units including Lab and Sample Data Management, Lab Design and Execution and Data Analysis and Insights
Acharya's experience is underscored by a scientific education from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and postgraduate degrees in Physics and MIS from the University of Illinois, US. When it comes to predictions for what will happen in the industry in light of the global economic downturn Acharya believes that growth in the genomics outsourcing industry will become much stronger as Pharma and biotech companies look to cut costs and streamline their businesses. Once again, that Technology Fast 500 confidence prevails.