Abbott’s Ajay Bhatt joins Intas Pharma as president-global HR

With almost three decades of experience in the pharma sector, Bhatt is looking forward to developing the Organisation, its culture and people capability.

After a successful stint of 13 years in Abbott where he handled multiple HR leadership roles, Ajay Bhatt has joined Intas Pharmaceuticals as president-global human resources. He will be responsible for India, Europe, and the US along with the rest of the emerging markets. Intas is one of the fastest growing Indian pharma companies with a strong presence in chronic and acute therapies, balanced portfolio with strong presence in Europe, US and emerging markets.

On his new innings at Intas Pharma, Bhatt appreciated the Company’s pace of growth and said , “It has a strong character, values and also agility. I look forward to being part of this organisation and contributing to its growth aspiration.”

In his previous stint with Abbott, Bhatt had held several leadership positions in India and overseas. In the last role as director-HR, innovation and development, Bhatt led the global HR function and was based out of Switzerland for three years.

Bhatt had joined Abbott as its director-human resources in 2005. His talent strategies enabled the Company to remain the employer of choice consistently for many years. He was instrumental in the acquisition of Piramal and consolidation of Abbott’s pharma business in India, which involved large -scale change-management initiatives. The initiatives had impacted around 15,000 employees from the commercial, manufacturing, supply chain, product development and support functions of the firm. Bhatt also ensured these changes were implemented along with the growth of the business. For this, Abbott had to set up strong objectives, governance, process and communication with a clear and compelling vision in consultation with the leadership teams and other stakeholders. Bhatt says, “The key to success was a robust project-based execution with strong review and alignment processes to ensure achievement of the transformation objectives and business deliverables.”

It is critical for HR leaders to understand the business for change management and coach business leaders to navigate the matrix, while anticipating the change and adapting proactively. Besides this, he also led India’s sales force transformation project, which ensured Abbott’s growth in the country and created a distinct value proposition for its sales employees.

In his global HR role, Bhatt led additional cross-business transformation projects across the Company’s pharmaceutical business, globally. He was instrumental for the global change-management work stream for digital initiatives across the emerging markets of China, Vietnam, India, Russia, Philippines and Latin America. This was executed with innovation and development initiatives through Fit2
Win centres of excellence, that focused on building technical and leadership capabilities in the respective markets.

As a veteran in the pharma industry, Bhatt believes the sector has the potential to impact the quality of human life. “It gives me the opportunity to contribute to this impact by developing the organisation, its culture and people capability,” he adds.

Bhatt started his career in the industry with Sun Pharma in 1989, where he stayed for almost 13 years to lead several initiatives including talent acquisition, development and retention of a large multi-division sales force and drive performance management and career development programmes, besides being part of the core team for acquisitions and mergers.

In 2004, Bhatt joined Torrent Pharmaceuticals as vice-president – HR, where he was responsible for steering the HR function to lead talent management and people-development strategies across the pharmaceutical business. He has also been associated with the Zydus Group as general manager – HR, in 2002.

Bhatt has a master’s degree in social work in the field of personnel management, from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. His hobbies include flying, aeromodelling and gliding. He also possesses a private pilot licence (PPL).