Transcription Doc

Sineflex Project

Note: This transcription document is a text version of the upGrad videos present in this session. It
is not meant to be read independently, but can be used to complement your video watching
experience.

Video 1

Speaker: Kavea Chavali

In this session, you'll hear from Mahesh Iyer, the co-founder of Sineflex solutions, a healthcare
analytics business.

Before we dive into the actual problem statement, let's hear from Mahesh about healthcare
domain, the players that constitute it and how it has evolved over the last decade.

Speaker: Mahesh Iyer

Hi. So, let's start a little bit with the understanding of the healthcare domain in terms of how it's
been over the last so many years and what's changing today, and what really prompted us at
Sineflex solutions to step into this area of trying to enable innovation and acceleration in the
healthcare space.

So, let's think about healthcare as the overarching domain. So, you have pharmaceuticals, you
have the hospitals, the healthcare, the medical service providers, and then you have insurance.

So, let's think about three, these three big buckets, and let's take each one a little bit on its own.

So, let's start with pharma. And pharma as all of you know, is in the business of producing drugs
for patients. And so how does a pharma company typically go about doing this?

They discover a molecule or they take a particular molecule, they look to see how it works on
patients.

They do a lot of clinical tests and then ultimately, they get approval to sell the drugs to the
patients, and this is how a pharma company typically works.

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And the focus there has always been on science and medicine. So, the science to actually discover
the molecule, see how it works, work with the properties of the molecule to make it palatable to
humans.

And then ultimately be able to, work with doctors to understand what is the best way to sell these
drugs. And that's been the focus area for pharma.

If you move to the hospital sector, it's all been about patients. It's all been about the medical
science.

Each doctor coming in, being able to look at a report, being able to look at a particular patient,
identify the disease that the patient might be having, and ultimately being able to treat the
patient.

So, it's all been about the medical science. And then if you think about insurance, which is sort of
an allied field to the first two, it's been about, you know, reimbursing.

So, again, it's been about patients coming in, going to their service providers, going to the
hospitals, getting the treatments, going to the pharmaceutical companies, getting the drugs, and
then ultimately getting reimbursed by the insurance companies.

And that's how it's been for the last so many years. But what's changed now. You know, all of a
sudden you see most of the major Pharma companies moving into what they say, the data space.

Everybody's talking about innovation, right. And not just innovation in the medical or the scientific
side, because that's been happening forever. Now people are talking about innovation in a whole
different context.

So, one of the major pharmaceutical companies called Novartis, the CEO very famously once said
that, we are not just a medicines company, we are a data and a medicines company.

So, essentially these, all these major pharmaceutical companies now are pitching themselves as
custodians of data, as consumers of data and leveraging the power of data in order to be able to
do well in their own fields.

If you move to the hospital side, there is something very, very similar. There's been an explosion
of analytics in the hospital space to see, what kind of patients come in, how do you get these
patients to think about prevention rather than just treatment?

How do you follow up patients remotely while they are not at your clinic? How do you gather
enough information about these patients to be able to predict when they will have the next issue,
and so on and so forth.
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So, and then a lot of focus on the operational side of the hospital business? How. do you optimize
your bed utilization rate and so on? So, again, there's been a large area of innovation again in the
hospital space.

And then of course, not much to be said about the insurance space at all, where everything is
predicated around being able to exactly predict what your outflow is going to be per patient.

How do you minimize the amount of money that you will be spending on a particular patient? How
do you maximize the fact that, the premium that you charge goes a longest. And it's all been
about data.

So, we see that this advent of data has somehow, really transformed the way that we think about
the healthcare space by itself.

Speaker: Kavea Chavali

In this video, you heard from a Mahesh on the three players in the healthcare space. Pharma
companies that focus on drug discovery and sales, hospitals and clinics that focus on diagnosing
and treating patients, and insurance companies that focus on reimbursement and claims for the
patients.

You also heard on how the entire domain is evolving with the advent of data and analytics. In the
next video, we'll hear about why and how Sineflex solutions was born.

Video 2

Speaker: Kavea Chavali

Sineflex solutions was founded in 2018 in the midst of a data transformation in the healthcare
industry. Let's hear from Mahesh as to how and why it was founded.

Speaker: Mahesh Iyer

So, why Sineflex? What is it that really motivated us to step into trying to build this ecosystem for
innovation in the healthcare space?

So, as we saw, the healthcare domain was going through a major transformation, from moving to
being pretty much science and medical dominated, to moving to being able to include data,
aggregate data, to be able to really increase the efficiency of their processes, to increase the
efficiency of their research and so on, so forth.
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And that's where we decided that we will try and form Sineflex as a boutique consulting company,
which would help accelerate this, especially in the Indian context.

So, let's think about how we came about doing this. So, all three of us as founders were
essentially from Novartis.

We all held, global leadership positions at Novartis and all of us kind of shared a passion for
saying, how can we really transform the way pharmaceutical research in particular, but healthcare
in general is being done.

And that's what really prompted us to step out and start this consulting company.

So, let's think about exactly what it is that Sineflex tries to do. So, we position ourselves as
essentially a platform service.

We decided that what we were going to do was not start to build large teams for ourselves.

What we wanted to do was leverage what was already happening in many of the universities, in
many of the start-up ecosystems in India, and look to see how we could take that and build that
into solutions that the healthcare companies would need.

So, we started to say, can we then go to the universities and look to see, meet the professors and
see the kind of research work that they're doing and build a catalogue out of this.

So, one of the things that we said is, we went to the universities and said, Hey, we would like to
know all the research that your professors are doing.

We would include that as part of our catalogue and if, and when anything starts to match an
existing problem that we're trying to solve for a particular client, whether it's a pharma company
or a hospital, we will try and connect the two and then go ahead and establish this project.

The way that we wanted to establish these projects was as a tripartite agreement. So, you had
the client, which was typically the healthcare company, whether it is pharma, whether it is
hospital, whether it is insurance, who really wanted a particular problem solved.

You had the solution providers who were typically professors at universities, or they were start-up
companies having a particular product or a service.

And Sineflex's role would essentially be to connect these two partners and add a layer of domain
mentoring on top of all of this. Because one of the things that we absolutely realized is that the
connection is where a lot of things are lost.
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And so, we felt that at Sineflex, we were kind of uniquely positioned to bring these two together.
You know, we had a good understanding of the domain having worked in the domain for a
combined over 50 or 60 years.

We also had a really good understanding of the tech component, given our natural strengths
there. And we said, let's bring these two together and add that layer of domain mentoring on top.

So, it was always going to be a very knowledge and experiential based consulting services, which
really aimed to bridge the gap of the clients that needed problem solved and the solution
providers that had solutions, which needed to be tailored to fit this particular problem.

Video 3

Speaker: Kavea Chavali

In the last video, you heard about Sineflex and how it was founded. In this video, let's hear about
the DART, dart model, which is core to how Sineflex actions each of its projects.

Speaker: Mahesh Iyer

So, what we did was that we crystallize this into a model that we really built and eventually
trademark called DART, which stands for design, analyse, raise and transform.

So, the way we do this is the design component is obviously the design thinking part of it where
we really go back to a particular client and understand from them if the problem that they're
trying to solve is really the problem that needs to be solved.

So, really doing an in depth understanding from all the stakeholders involved to crystallize and
hone in on what the exact problem statement is that needs to be addressed. So, that's the design
component.

Then we do the analyse part, which is essentially understand who are the solution providers of the
space. Are they from the research end? Are they start-ups, are they small and medium sized
analytical companies?

Are they a different set of solution providers, really trying to understand that. But also trying to
baseline for the client, what their current set of metrics are and what they really want to improve.
So, that's the analysis part.

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We moved to raise, which is actually the lengthiest part of the project, which is where we do
multiple iterations of the solution. You know, we make sure that what we're trying to build is
exactly what the client wants.

And then the last part, which somehow gets left out in most of these kinds of transformation
projects, which is actually the transform part, which is taking something which is a successful
proof of concept and moving that into the company, making sure that everybody actually buys
into that particular change.

And training the end users on the changes needed to their existing process to make this particular
new solution effective.

And we believe very strongly in the transform part. Not only to actually make sure that there is
uptake of the solution, but also to ensure that we measure what the efficiencies are based on our
new solution, comparing them to the baseline and ensuring that what we really set out to do was
actually achieved.

So, we built this model. We made sure that all the projects that we did were built around this
particular model of DART.

And that was one of the major, unique selling points for Sineflex, which is that when we went and
met with a particular client, one of the things that we would talk about is a fact that we're not
here just to provide a particular solution.

We are not here to give you a solution we already have, so we're not pre-selling you something
that we've already created.

What we really want to do is come in, understand your particular problem, understand the
nuances of what it is that you're trying to do, build a bespoke custom solution that exactly fits
what you need.

And then ensure that we do an uptake of this particular solution. Do end user training and
measure what we've done, so that you can be confident that your money is well spent.

So, this is how we pitched our particular company. This is what we did in terms of really
differentiating ourselves from a lot of the other companies, the other solutions that are in the
market by essentially saying that what we provide is essentially our domain expertise and our
connection. And that's how Sineflex has been operating for the last couple of years.

Video 4

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Speaker: Kavea Chavali

So, you heard about Sineflex in the last video, but what about the three co-founders? At least in
the initial days, the founders of a business are essentially the business itself.

Hence, it's important to understand the background of the three co-founders. So let's hear from
Mahesh.

Speaker: Mahesh Iyer

So, let's talk a little bit about, how things were for the three of us before we started Sineflex. So,
if you look at our profiles, you'll find that all three of us have very, very different backgrounds.

One of our founders Santosh has a background in chemistry and pharmacy, and eventually
worked as a, as a site investigator for a number of different large pharmaceutical companies
before taking on the role of being the global head for the clinical scientific expert group at
Novartis.

The other founder Dinesh had a very, very tech background. So, he had a bachelor's in computer
science. In fact, flirted with the idea of floating his own company way back in the 90’s when start-
ups were not such a big deal.

And then worked for a large number of years in large pharmaceutical companies like Novartis in
the data management space.

So, essentially building databases, automating a lot of the scripts, severely having that very, very
strong technical background, before moving to a learning role where he was heading a learning
and development for Novartis development.

And then personally me, I mean, my background was all in statistics. So, I got my PhD in stats
from one of the universities in the US.

Again, worked in the pharma space for a large number of years focusing on clinical development
of compounds, mainly oncology compounds before setting up large stats, and programming and
analytical teams for Novartis based out of Hyderabad.

So, apart from the fact that all three of us really spent a lot of time in the domain, what we really
did was very, very different.

But while things were very different, there were also a lot of similarities. One thing that is
absolutely common between the three of us was all three of us really enjoyed the whole teaching,
training space.
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All three of us were certified trainers in a number of different psychometric evaluation kind of
things, like NBTI, emotional intelligence and so on and so forth.

All three of us used to do a lot of trainings at Novartis, especially focused around collaboration,
around innovation. And that was one thing that really brought the three of us together.

You know, some of us wanted to really focus on the access space. How do you really get a large
number of patients access to medicines, especially in a constrained environment like India.

So, some of us wanted to spend our times doing that. Some of us really wanted to focus on the
technical aspects of the innovation space that was really booming at this point.

Some of us really wanted to see how we could emerge as thought leaders, again in the healthcare
space and so on.

So, what we really needed to do was to say, okay, can we think of a way that the three of us
could come together, really help establish what our 5 year goals were, what our long-term vision
was, for what we wanted to be doing, but do it together.

You know, make sure that we learn from each other's strengths, leverage each of those strengths
and put that together to really make things better for the healthcare space in general. And that is
really what brought the three of us together.

Video 5

Speaker: Kavea Chavali

In the last video, Mahesh mentioned that the co-founders of Sineflex had the vision of making
medicine and healthcare more accessible to the masses, and they wanted to achieve this noble
feed by leveraging the power of technology.

Great. Isn't it? But how did the co-founders meet? And how did their Sineflex journey begin? Let's
hear about this from Mahesh.

Speaker: Mahesh Iyer

So, how do we actually really come together? How did the three of us meet? Of course, the
meeting was very easy because all of us were part of the same leadership team at Novartis.

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So, we had really met each other and worked well together with each other, from a professional
standpoint. But how did this idea germinate? And I remember this, the exact time when we
started thinking about it.

So, off and on, we would make jokes about it. We would say, you know what, things are so
routine and have you been doing this for so long, we really need to step out and do something
different and so on.

So, while those kinds of conversations were kind of up in the air, we really had not coalesced or
really come down to what it is that we wanted to do.

And I remember this one time when we were coming back from one of our other sites, and
Dinesh and me were in the car and we started having a conversation and it’s a long ride back.

So, we had to, we, both of us started having a conversation about what it is that we really wanted
to do. And when we started having that particular conversation.

We started to say, hey, you know what, there are so many things that are common between how
Dinesh wanted to really spend the rest of his career, and the kind of things that he wanted to do,
versus the kind of things that I wanted to do.

And both of us were like, how can we leverage some of these things? So, right now, the connects
that we have with the industry, with academia, with researchers, with start-ups is almost an
serendipitous, right?

We go there, we meet them. We like something, we kind of make a connect happen. But how can
we formalize something like this. How can we, up-skill the regular workforce into people that can
actually use some of these new technologies in improving the work that they do.

And, so we started having this conversation and we said, we really should step out and set
something like this up.

And one thing that we both realize is both Dinesh and me are very, very strong in ideating, yeah.
We were all about, we could do this, we can do that. This is how we will set things up and so on
and so forth.

And very quickly, it was just about what an hour long, one-and-a-half-hour ride. By the time we
were done with that, we kind of very quickly realized that we actually needed somebody who
would keep us honest, who would actually make us do the things that we said we were going to
do.

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You know, both Dinesh and me were much more about the broad vision and the strategy. We
needed somebody who was also extremely good at executing operationally. And we quickly
realized that, that person was Santosh.

So, what we did was as soon as we got off the car, we called up Santosh and said, hey, you know
what, Dinesh and me have just come up with this idea for what it is that we want to do as a
company, stepping out of the Novartis, and would you be interested. And just like that in a flash,
he said, yes.

So, we met a week later at our local coffee shop and started to really jot down a bunch of things
that we thought we wanted to do with this new company.

We started to say, Hey, what are the things that are absolutely critical that you feel you need to
do? And we started making that list.

And then we also started making a list of what are the things that you don't want to do, that
absolutely, that you never want to get into that space.

So, we made both of these lists and we started to say, okay, let's try, and the amazing part was
that, we were pretty much agreeable on most of those things.

We were all agreeable on what it is we really wanted to do. We were kind of all agreeable in what
it is that we didn't want to do. And that's when we realized that, we could actually come together,
put this company together and try and have a lot of fun doing it.

So, the one thing that was absolutely critically important to all three of us was that we needed to
enjoy, have fun doing what it is that we wanted to do. And that's how we started setting up
Sineflex.

So, if you think about, you know, the other thing that we actually did during this meeting was
really jot down what each of our strengths were, what each of our passions were, what each of
our values systems were.

And that was very, very important for us to do that. Because you could see, from what we spoke
about before that each one of us had slightly different strengths.

Dinesh was technically very strong. For me, it was much more of the analytical space. And for
Santosh, it was on the scientific end.

And we really needed to make sure that what would we set up would be something that, where
we would leverage each one of these strengths. So, that was one part of it.

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The second part of it was also about what it is that we are really passionate about. Both Dinesh
and me were very passionate about going out and doing a lot of talks and a lot of conferences.

You know, both of us were very, very active in the external world, fairly visible, used to get invited
to about 10 to 12 conferences a year, to come to talks.

Santosh on the other hand was somebody who was much more thorough in their research, would
write a lot of thought leadership articles and a lot of different media.

He was not necessarily out there giving talks, but was somebody who actually did a lot of the
research and did a lot of really well thought out articles.

So, we wanted to make sure that, that was also something that we leveraged, that we would use
the external network connect that Dinesh and me had built over the last so many years.

While, Santos would continue to drive the whole thought leadership piece in terms of our visibility,
in putting out white papers, in writing opinion articles and writing thought leadership articles
through various media.

And thereby present people with an all-around package of people who can go out, get the word
out in terms of what needs to be done, but also do the research in terms of writing out these
really thought-provoking articles.

So, we made sure that we kind of set those rules for all of us, that there would be somebody who
would actually do the operational thought leadership piece. There would be others who would
actually do the front-end branding, selling piece and so on.

So, we kind of just by looking at that kind of stuff that each one of us was really prone to doing of
our own free will, we were able to really structure those rows kind of separately.

Speaker: Kavea Chavali

What a journey! But most importantly, what a team. Each of the co-founders clearly evaluated
their areas of strength and channelized their energy into building a leading company in its space.

Dinesh, technical strength, Santosh, scientific strength expertise, coupled with Mahesh's analytic
capabilities together turned their vision into a reality.

Video 6

Speaker: Kavea Chavali

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To be operational, every company needs to sustain itself in a broader ecosystem, which in simple
words is called an industry.

In this eco-system, several internal and external parties, or let's say partners help in making a
company functionable and viable.

Now in this case, Sineflex emerged as a boutique solutions company in the healthcare sector. But
who were its stakeholders?

Let's watch this video to find out which groups the co-founders partnered with to make Sineflex a
successful company in its space.

Speaker: Mahesh Iyer

So, once we decided to set up Sineflex where, you know, leveraging on our strengths and so on,
the next question that came up was what should really Sineflex stand for, right?

I mean, we knew that we wanted this to be one of those boutique consulting companies that
really solved bespoke problems, bespoke solutions, offered bespoke solutions to clients, and not
very general solutions.

We also wanted it to be known for the quality, for delivering, for being very metrics based and so
on.

These were the kinds of things that were very, very important to us as founders. That we provide
value, that they're able to measure the value that we provide, that what we really provide is
exactly what the clients want and so on.

So, we wanted Sineflex to really stand for all the set of values that all three of us really shared.
Once we did that, the next thing that came about was what should really be the mission, the
vision for the company and so on.

And what we thought we would do was really, our plans for expansion are very, very limited. We
never wanted to turn into a 200 person, 500 packs.

We didn't have metrics around, how much money we were going to make in the first two, five
years.

What we really wanted to do was to say, how well are we able to leverage and create this
ecosystem, right? How well are we able to connect these?

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So, what we really focused our energies on was to say, how many times are we able to take, what
a client wants as a problem and connect them to an external partner such that it benefits both of
them.

And that's really what we wanted to focus on. So, our whole vision was not about growth for
Sineflex as its own, but actually, to try and see how we could really get the whole ecosystem, the
innovation ecosystem up.

So, that's how we set up Sineflex. So, we tried to kind of bucket them into what we call
stakeholders.

So, on one hand, we had the large healthcare companies that needed the problem solved. So, in
some sense they would be, our customers or our clients.

On the other hand, we would have the solution providers, whether they are from universities or
they're start-ups or small and medium enterprises. And we kind of call them our partners.

But in some sense, both of them are stakeholders because we needed to be able to leverage the
technical expertise of one.

And we also needed to ensure that we were able to convince the clients of the need for that
particular solution. So, both of these were in some sense stakeholders to some extent.

And then we also had the broader ecosystem. So, if you were to think about large companies,
while there was a business unit that might actually have a problem that needed to be solved.

It also involved upskilling of the workforce in which case the learning and development groups
functions within those companies were also our stakeholders because we had to make sure that
we worked with them to roll out the training plans or whatever that were necessary to upskill the
workforce. So, that was one big component.

The other big component was while the start-ups were essentially partners, we also realized that
they didn't understand the drug development or any of the health healthcare processes to that
same extent.

They didn't understand the regulatory scenario that was involved in the healthcare space on the
clinical validations that were required if you had devices and so on.

So, we really had to mentor those guys in some sense.

So, we kind of started to think about many of these incubators accelerators as our other
stakeholders in some sense, which meant that we had to go work with them and ensure that the
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startups that were based in their units understood this whole process, so that by the time, we had
a problem statement that was ready, these startups would have done the basic requirements that
were necessary for us to be able to implement those solutions.

So, it was a much more diffused stakeholder space in some sense. There was a fair bit of overlap
between who would be partners and who be customers.

In some cases, if we went to a small and medium enterprise and they said, Hey, you know what,
we have a particular product but we need you to come in and help us to really sharpen that
product so that we could actually go and sell that, let's say, to a potential customer.

And so, in that sense, our partners became our clients at that point. So, there was a little bit of,
this cross that was essentially going on between what we considered as our larger stakeholder
map.

But, one of the things that we quickly realized is that one thing that was absolutely certain, that
people needed to really understand was that each one of these folks would really be looking at
what we were to offer slightly differently.

Speaker: Kavea Chavali

Mahesh illustrated the stakeholder map for the company. He spoke about the internal
stakeholders, like a skilled workforce employed within the organization and the external
stakeholders like partners providing technical expertise to Sineflex.

Now, as Mahesh mentioned, it was very important for the company to communicate the value of
its offerings separately to each stakeholder group.

But for this, they would need to dig deeper and understand what exactly these groups were
looking for. Let's find out more about this in the next video.

Video 7

Speaker: Kavea Chavali

In the following video, Mahesh is going to clearly outline the value proposition that needs to be
communicated to the key stakeholders of the company.

Now to do that, the question that we should ask ourselves first is, what are these stakeholders
looking for and how can Sineflex meet their needs?

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Speaker: Mahesh Iyer

Let's say if we were not an LLP, but we're looking to raise funds, let us say, or even now we're
going to raise funds at some point. What an investor would typically look at, would essentially be
to see, how unique our product is, in this case, our product as a service.

But how unique is our offering? Are there a lot of people doing the kind of work that we are
doing? Are we able to generate enough money? So, that's one big component.

The second one is about scalability. Generalisability. Now, we were a very boutique knowledge-
based organization.

So, we were essentially constrained by the number of resources that you would have, who would
have that kind of experience. But to say, would we be able to grow from our initial set of founders
of three to about 30 even?

So, that would be another big thing that the investors would be looking for to say, Hey, is this
something that we can actually put money in and it'll grow enough for us to get our returns back?

So, this would be a couple of things that I feel investors will be looking at for such a knowledge-
based organization.

If you were to look at clients, it would be, about us, how good are the founders. How good are
the people that are actually going to provide those domain expertise?

Do they really have an understanding of both the domain and the solution and effectively do this
bridging? So that's one big component that the clients will be looking for.

The second thing that the clients typically look for in this type of setting is really our network. Are
we restricted to two or three universities or do we have 200 universities?

Are we really fully aware of all the research that's happening so that we give them the best, let's
say potential slew of solutions that are possible? How good is our connect with the start-up
ecosystem, with the small and medium enterprises?

And most importantly, how good is our ability to scale. So, to be able to take a solution which
works in a proof of concept setting and then move it to a large scale, full scale implementation is
a scalability issue.

And, most clients are really interested to figure out whether we can actually make that scale
happen. And these would be a couple of things that clients would really be focusing on.

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And then if you look at our partners, so to speak, the universities, the start-ups and so on; for
them, it's again about our ability to connect them to the clients. So, that's again, our ability to flex
our network, make this connect happen. So, that's one big component.

The other component is also our ability to really mentor them in a way that's appropriate for them
to provide the right solutions, because if we don't understand certain aspects of what is really
required, then we are really failing in our core job of really providing the layer of domain
mentorship.

So, these would be a couple of things that really the, our partners or our solution partners would
really be looking for.

So, we kind of mapped all of this out and said, these are the specific areas that we need to focus
on, that these would be really what we would include as our offering so that we make sure that
our messaging to each of our potential stakeholders becomes very clear.

Speaker: Kavea Chavali

He clearly demonstrated that while the investors were looking to understand how innovative and
profitable the offerings were, the clients wanted to understand the level of domain expertise
involved and the scalability of the solutions.

Lastly, the technology partners of Sineflex were looking to not only build connections with the
clients, but also receive mentorship from the Sineflex team.

Video 8

Speaker: Kavea Chavali

Now we know about the multiple stakeholders, both internal as well as external that Mahesh
needs to interact with.

It only makes sense that we look at the different channels he uses to communicate with these
stakeholders. Let's hear from Mahesh about the communication channels he uses.

Speaker: Mahesh Iyer

So, now let's talk about the various modes of communication, the various ways that you would
use to communicate with potential clients, with partners and so on.

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All of us are very familiar with, the formal methods of communication. You know, you would use
emails, and I'm sure that we've all learned about how to structure the email appropriately, what
kind of content would you keep and so on.

So, the way that we normally work with this is that when we send an email out and if it's a cold
call, for example, if it's somebody that we don't know, then we always start off with a little bit of
an introduction of who we are and what the company does.

We talk specifically, so we do a little bit of research around that particular company to understand
what are some of the areas that are really pertinent to that particular company.

So, we speak a little bit about that. But you don't want to make it so lengthy that somebody sees
a whole page and says, man, I can't deal with this right now.

So, you typically want to keep everything to about one to two lines while still giving them the right
level of information to get them interested, to actually go and click on, whatever you attach as a
pitch deck or about us kind of a brochure.

So, you want to be able to structure emails that way, if it is, and this is, especially if you're writing
it to a cold call, somebody that you don't know.

On the other hand, if it is somebody that you know very well, you're flexing your network at that
point. You know, there has to be a little bit of that element of the personal touch.

And the personal touch is not, what people say, just asking about the weather or about the
family or things like that.

The personal touch has to be something to do with your business. You know, something to say,
Hey, you know what, over the last six months or one year, these are the kinds of things that I've
been doing. It's really exciting. I would love to talk to you about it.

So, it still has to be business oriented. But it would be quite okay to share your thoughts, your
excitement, some of your concerns, all of those kinds of things with people that you already have
a relationship with.

So, these are typical standard email writing communication mode, I mean tips that you would
normally use.

Video 9

Speaker: Kavea Chavali

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Well, emails are definitely the most formal means of communication. But I do think that these are
a bit risky. Don't you?

What if the other person ends up missing the email while you are left hanging, waiting for a
response? I'm sure there has to be more to it. Let's hear more from Mahesh.

Speaker: Mahesh Iyer

Most of the time emails are typically best followed up with at least a phone call, right? It's very
hard to get people's time for them to really meet you. And it involves a fair amount of travel for
you if they're not local.

So, I think while face to face meetings are absolutely fantastic, the telephone calls also serve a
very, very important purpose.

And most of the time whenever we write to people, it is always asking first for a short TC, a 30-
minute TC. And asking to say, Hey, I just want to tell you a little bit more about this. I think there
is some potential opportunities here. Can we get on a call?

And most of the time, if you don't ask for a lot of their time, like an hour plus, you know, a 30-
minute call is typically something that you do manage to get fairly quickly on people's calendars.

And the third of course is when you're actually visiting a place and you've had either an email or a
phone call conversation with somebody, and then you're visiting that particular city.

We make it a point to at least write to three or four different people to say, Hey, we are coming,
we are visiting, would you have some time to meet up?

And it doesn't have to be in the office. It could be, Hey, can I meet you for breakfast at 7:30 close
to your house? Can I meet you for an evening coffee close to your place, workplace? I mean,
whichever works, right?

But that ability then to take it to that next level, because so much of making these connects
happen is about building relationships. And building relationships has to be with that genuine
interest to actually build a relationship, not just to, you know, for your business.

Video 10

Speaker: Kavea Chavali

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Now that we have covered the different communication channels in detail, let's hear about some
memorable incidents related to these from Mahesh.

Speaker: Mahesh Iyer

So, these would be a lot of different ways that you would try to interact with people. Now what
happens when things don't go very well.

So, let us say that, so this particular thing happened for us where we started off working with the
head of a chain of Polyclinics.

They had a number of different polyclinics in a particular city. We started speaking to the head.
And when we first started speaking to the head, it was through a personal connect.

So again, we flexed our network, it was somebody we knew, and we started first having that
conversation. And the first time we spoke to them, they said, Oh, absolutely, this is fantastic. That
sounds great. What don't you drop us an email?

And so, we followed up with a long email, a longish email talking a little bit about how we think
we can help them and attaching a slide deck that was designed, especially to solve some of the
problems that we think they were facing.

We sent that email, two weeks, three weeks, no response. So we sent another reminder saying,
Hey, have you had a chance to check the email?

Again, no response. So, then we said, okay, so what do we do now? So, we said, okay, let's, you
know, since we know these people, let's get back on a phone call with them.

So, we called them up and said, Hey, don't mean to push you. You know, what about the email?
And they said, oh yeah, I've just been so busy. I have not really checked emails at all.

Now these happen to be doctors. And, you can imagine if a doctor's working from about 9, 9:30,
10 in the morning till about 8:30, 9 in the evening, they really don't have too much time for
emails.

So, we said okay, so then we asked them, we said, what is the best way to communicate with
you? And they said, why don't you do WhatsApp? You know, I mean, we check WhatsApp quite
regularly. So, let's do WhatsApp.

Now most people wouldn't think about WhatsApp really as a very strong business communication
tool. But you know what, one needs to be flexible. You have to do what works. So, we said, fine.
So, we'll do WhatsApp.
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And then we started doing that and we started exchanging some fair number of messages on
WhatsApp saying, Hey, what about this? Have you checked this? I've sent you an email and so on.
Right.

And it seemed to work reasonably well. And they said, Hey, we like the proposal, why don't you
come and have a conversation.

So, we went there, had a conversation, and this person actually brought the COO and a couple of
other people in to the meeting.

So, we had this nice conversation with them and they said, yes, yes, yes. They said, this is the
area that we want to work in. So, they give us a broad area.

So, we said, fair enough. And they said, why don't you give us a proposal? So, we said, this is
going really well. So, we came back, we worked on a proposal. We sent it, followed up with a
WhatsApp message saying, Hey, we have sent you the proposal.

Went on for two-three weeks, came back and they said, Hey, you know what, we're not really
sure if this is what we want to work on now. Yeah.

So, we said, okay. And then we said, so what do we do, right. I mean, so they said, why don't you
come back and let's have another call, I mean, another meeting. So we said, okay.

So, we went back and this time there was the COO as well, but a couple of other people, and we
had another conversation around a slightly different area.

And we said, okay, fair enough. And we said, let's do a proposal. And we did that. And again,
same thing, yit went two-three weeks and didn't really move on.

And this happened three times. And by then, we had already spent, and it's very important when
you're running your own business, that you really have to keep, have a handle on the amount of
time that you're spending on building some of these relationships.

And then we just realized that we had spent so much time, done three proposals, met with them
two or three different times that it just wasn't moving ahead. And we at least came to the
realization that maybe this was not a priority for them.

Video 11

Speaker: Kavea Chavali

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With a PhD in statistics and significant years of work experience in the healthcare field, Mahesh
had established himself as an expert in the industry.

But how did his personal brand evolve further? What pushed him to leverage his skills and
network strength to become a thought leader in the field? Let's hear about this from the man
himself.

Speaker: Mahesh Iyer

So, now let's talk a little bit about our journey and my personal journey, from the time that we
started Sineflex.

So, what has really changed for me. And I think for me, the biggest change has been sort of my
evolution, from being somebody who was almost regarded as a subject matter expert in a fairly
narrow field.

As I mentioned, my background was all in statistics. I was a president of a couple of professional

statistical societies. And most people knew me as somebody who could build teams of
statisticians, of programmers, of analysts, specifically in the drug development area.

But since then, over the last couple of years with Sineflex, what's happened is that, that's changed
and that's evolved into somebody who's maybe regarded as somebody who works in the
innovation space for healthcare in general.

And to be able to do that, required a fair amount of studying for me personally. I mean, I had to,
I've gotten into a really nice rhythm of reading a lot every day.

I have started publishing a fair number of articles on social media regarding topics which are
beyond just drug development and statistics and programming and analytics.

And for me, that is important that as the company evolves, as our consulting company has
evolved, it is also important for you to evolve as a leader, as a thought leader from maybe a
narrow area that is your core competency right now into somebody who is much more general
and somebody who can actually speak around the whole area of healthcare as such. And for me,
that's what's happened.

Speaker: Kavea Chavali

The key takeaway from this video is that a leader, especially a thought leader should always be
evolving even after acquiring high level skills and enjoying a robust network strength.

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Mahesh never confined himself within the boundaries of his industry or function. Instead, his
motto has always been to constantly update himself regarding eclectic areas of passion by
incorporating his learnings and also influence professionals to push themselves.

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