VISHNU ERA 12

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2 THE A QUARTERLY NEWS PUBLICATION FROM SRI <strong>VISHNU</strong> EDUCATIONAL SOCIETY INTERVIEW Sri Hari Thalapalli, CEO, CallHealth Mr Hari Thalapalli is a multidisciplinary leader with close to three decades of experience in the Technology service space. Prior to joining CallHealth, Mr Hari was with Tech Mahindra, where he provided leadership to critical business process areas including business consulting, digital marketing, CRM, supply chain management, etc., with an annual revenue run-rate of approximately $300 million. In addition he provided leadership to the Global Marketing Function and was instrumental in Tech Mahindra's brand positioning over the last six years. His prior roles involved building robust HR practices, through which he helped raise the performance bar and to help the organization to scale new heights. He won many accolades, including the CPO of the Year Award from Bloomberg in 2010. To bring complete healthcare to the doorstep of the customers, CallHealth is building a new-age healthcare ecosystem and harnessing the collective knowledge and experience of its team, shares Hari Thalapalli, CEO, CallHealth with Team Vishnu Era comprising of Mr A L Kishore, Assoc Prof, BVRIT N, Mr Anuraag Kaushik & Mr Rakesh Kumar (ECE) Could you please tell us your journey from a Post Graduate student @ Loyola College to Chief Marketing Officer (/Chief People Officer) at big Software Companies to CEO, CallHealth? To begin with, frankly, if I look back into my life, it was no different from any other normal guy. I come from a normal middle class family. I have had my own ups and downs, confused set of thoughts on what to study, where to study, etc.People around me say that I am a go-getter, but to be honest I don't plan anything precise. All I knew was whatever the job you are in, you have to succeed everyday. You can't be complacent just because you did well yesterday. 'Succeeding in job or life' should be an integral part of your life. I mean, you'll have to essentially succeed everyday at work. In order to do that we have to keep improving in whatever we do. That was one hard lesson I learnt from my life and I am continuing to do that. Life sometimes won't give you what you want. I wanted to pursue mass communication and I didn't get a chance to do it. But I got an opportunity to do and I took it with both hands and succeeded in flying colors. Felt slightly bad when I missed the gold medal at my PG with 0.02 difference. I am happy with what I got from life; I never bothered about how much money I was making or what I was called viz CEO, CMO, Global Head, etc. I seriously mean it. The journey was without a definitive end purpose or target or goal, but was always an effort to do the best of whatever that was given to me at that point of time. I wanted to be my best at whatever I am doing at any given point in time. I am happy that I can do more things with the money I have today, but material things interests little to me. End of the day, we all end up having Dal-chawal after all. What's your take on Organizational objective? Even when it comes to organization's objectives, you should be never satisfied with what you can achieve, but you should be always satisfied with what you get. If you are unhappy and agitated, you achieve very little. The big play is in seeing the Big Picture. When I was in HR, we were #13 in the best employer's list. We worked hard to get to #1. It took 7-8 years to get to #1. In marketing, we wanted be a brand that everybody should recognize and appreciate; and we got there. Similarly, CallHealth's objective is to be the world's 1st and best integrated platform - and we are aiming to get there. What is the basic idea and purpose of starting CallHealth Services? In the last two decades, we have seen how technology changes the way we work, communicate, bank, buy, as well as consume media and entertainment. Technology has revolutionized the core of the healthcare industry. We have the best of surgical and diagnostic equipment. However, the delivery of healthcare services has not kept pace with this technological advances. CallHealth is aiming to bridge this gap in the healthcare landscape by using technology. Callhealth is all about enabling the patient to be at the center of ecosystem and pull all the services at the convenience of their space and time. Callhealth is about bringing the last mile connectivity and everything about health for the convenience of the customer. We are entering an area where nobody has ever worked before and I hope to bring dramatic changes. A lot of companies are doing it in bits and pieces like e-consultation, second opinion, etc. We are planning to bring all these under one roof. Kindly let us know about the patient-centric business model @ CallHealth? Is it commercially viable? Our model integrates all constituents of the healthcare eco-system (doctors, diagnostics, Medicines, physios, hospitals, Insurance, etc.) and makes them work in such a way that we provide speed, precision and results at an affordable price. Consulting a doctor, having diagnostic tests done, buying medicines, getting medical services like nursing, physiotherapy and more, is now just a call or click away. Even for visits to hospitals or imaging/diagnostic centers, CallHealth provides facilitation services to make the experience easier and smoother. By connecting customers to the entire eco-system, especially where there are gaps today, we derive better capacity utilization. Hospitals have labs where the utilization is often less than 60%. Some doctors are loaded 200% while others are not even at 40%. There is lot of unused capacity. We want to have greater spread of capacity and utilization. In doing so, we are able to provide services at a lower cost and at a reasonable discount to the customer. So, the customer gets it at a lower cost and we still make money on it. This is not a typical discount driven; often loss-making, e-commerce model. In addition, our Differential Diagnosis algorithm helps doctors as a Clinical Decision Support system to bring greater sharpness to the diagnosis of the illness / disease. This will help narrow the gaps in diagnosis that we at times encounter today. Our 'Info aids' tool helps the doctor to explain the cause of the illness to the patient much better and that helps to bring about a balanced understanding of the 'causal factors', for the patient. How are you going to take these services to the people? We use hub and spoke model. Hub is centralized area with specialist doctors, core services, etc. based in tier-1 cities like Hyderabad (taking homogeneity of language, culture into concern) and spokes are On-
ISSUE <strong>12</strong> JULY 2016 ground services in other cities like Vizag, Ongole, Nellore. We will gradually replicate to other cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi and to similar developing markets overseas. We heard that CallHealth provides single-point solution to all wellness and healthcare needs? Could you explain? The end-to-end integrated approach to healthcare enables CallHealth to provide a one-stop solution for all healthcare needs across a customer's life span and across the healthcare spectrum – Prevention, Wellness and Cure. Thus, creating a partnership that is life-long and not transactional in nature. We brought all components of healthcare under one roof. We are like Amazon of healthcare for the spread of offerings with the ease of usage that an Uber provides. What according to you is disruptive innovation in healthcare? How did disruptive innovation affect your company and health care system? In the past, doctor was at the center of ecosystem and the entire health care eco system was distributed around him / her. The patient was outside this circle and often had to run between different points in this eco system to complete a health check-up. In our model, we have brought the patient to the center and have placed the entire eco system around him. That's what technology has enabled us to do. We have flipped whole table. This is disruptive. Who is your real source of inspiration behind your success? Frankly, I can't name just one. I have been inspired by freshers in my team as much as from peers or people above me. What I learnt from all those I liked was the relentless drive and passion for results. I worked as HR for 20 years and we became best employers in our industry. Then, I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could succeed in other fields. HR was all about inside-out. In 2007, I moved to marketing which was completely outside-in. In 2013, I moved to a highly complex business role as the consulting head, where the team helped me double our revenues in 3 years. After almost 3 decades in technology services, I have now decided to provide leadership in the health care sector. The inspiration comes from the fact that I disrupt myself continuously and have to prove to myself that I can succeed. Currently you may have thousands of employees. What are practices you follow to retain the best talent? Currently, we are below 1000 in number. Our differentiator is that we have a flat organization model where there is no hierarchy of people; we only have hierarchy of opportunities. At CallHealth, our Officers are empowered and expected to take responsibility for a range of areas in their daily routines that are traditionally considered 'managerial decisions'. We have brought in a continuous assessment model – not a periodic one and have digitized most of our internal transactions. Work is still WIP and we will achieve 100% very soon Excluding yours, what is your most admired company? Personally, I love Google. They think brilliantly ahead of the times and innovate products or services. The few people at Google I have met are passionate about their company and the way they are building the products is awesome. I would love CallHealth to bring that culture and exceed our stakeholder expectations. Apple and Tesla are the other ones. How are Google different, in your opinion? They seem to be thinking of doing things that appear almost impossible. Imagine talking about providing Wi-Fi through the Loon Project! When we first hear about it, we would probably think how stupid can that be!! Then we turn around and realize that they have made it into a reality. It is sheer absurdity of an idea converted into a reality. CallHealth is on a journey like that. How would you like your company to be remembered by the people? Just like Facebook for bringing people together, Google for bringing information together, we would love to be remembered for bringing the healthcare ecosystem together. You must have faced many challenges in your professional life. What was the toughest one? How could you overcome? Only time I probably felt stress was during 2009 Satyam episode. It was period of time where because of the event one's professional credibility was also questioned. I had to prove them wrong and resurrect myself and be a part of the team that resurrected the company. I had a steep fall, but I climbed back. It was all three dimensions - professional, personal and financial. “ Our model integrates all constituents of the healthcare eco-system (doctors, diagnostics, Medicines, physios, hospitals, Insurance, etc.) What are your expectations from an entry level employee? I don't give much priority to academic score, even though it is a nice indicator of student's performance in academics. I look for people who challenge and can take risks. I love people who, when they fail, say “it is only half time in the game, the next half time is going to be my game.” (you know, the outcome of many football games are changes in the second half!). I seek game changers. I want the Dhonis of the world who consistently deliver under pressure (imagine scoring 23 runs in the last over to finish off the game - he has done it often); people with firmness of spirit that says “I can and will do”. I don't look for individual heroes - collaboration is the key. In short, I am interested in people who are Risk takers, Can maintain their cool, Have a 'never say die' attitude & are a pleasure to hang out with at work. What are the biggest opportunities for budding engineers in the next five years? The world is in midst of digital revolution. We live in a connected world today. People should leverage this revolution in their areas of study. You could be a mechanical engineer today, but we are talking about connected cars. You could be a shoe manufacturer, but we are talking about shoes that give you multiple health readings. Bring your analytical and inquisitive blend of mind to use digital revolution to create opportunities in your own areas of specialization. If GOD appears and asks you what or whom do you want to be (other than yourself), what will be your reaction? I could wish to be as disruptive as Steve Jobs (it takes a lot of guts to say “I will remove the physical keyboard from your phone”). Even though he had serious setbacks in life, he bounced back. He has an extraordinary creative mind, ability to sense the market needs, integrate product ideas and come out with path-breaking innovation. When the tablet (Apple Tab) came, many bought it and I know many who didn't know how to really leverage it. That is the difference. To be frank, it' not about wanting to be somebody. I would love to have the risk taking ability of Steve Jobs coupled with the compassion of my mother. GOAL POST Maneesha likes to describe herself as a Goddess of Small Things (professionwise), Verbal Architect and Vocal Acrobat (wannabe singer). ‘Watch'ing Swissness (Blogger at- https://thewanderlustswine.wordpress.com/ ) Switzerland shares a special relation with tunnels and tunnelling. Without sounding like I repeated myself, I must tell you that they are indeed different things, 'tunnels' and 'tunnelling'. I shall elaborate about them in just a while. After completing my masters' studies in Micro Nano Integrated Systems at Politecnico di Torino, Italy. I found myself at crossroads of what to do next. The Masters course left me with a micro-nanotech (if I may) hangover and the only thing I was sure of was wanting to remain with it. So, I took up an internship opportunity soon after at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland and voilà, since then m here. So coming back to the tunnels. If you followed the news lately, you might have heard that Switzerland achieved a huge feat. It finished building the world's longest tunnel at 57 km, the Gotthard base tunnel (WOAH!). But, it doesn't start there for the Swiss. Back in the 90's they did something a lot cool. Two researchers at IBM, Zurich, Switzerland invented the scanning 'TUNNELING' microscope. This machine lets you peak at individual atoms on the surfaces of materials (double WOAH!). Just imagine a pen, nano-patterned to an atom sitting at it's tip. Scanning this tip across the surface of samples you read and build atomic level information of the material. This is possible thanks to quantum mechanical tunnelling. Quantum physics tells us that there is nonzero probability that an electron can be on the other side of a potential barrier that it sees, by 'tunnelling' through it. So with tunnelling of electrons between the atomic tip and atoms of the material (surface to be studied) scientists can get a wealth of information. But this is the system that the IBM greats made. So, what do you do Maneesha? I work on tunnelling too. And there ends the similarity I share with those Nobel Prize winning scientists. I work on tunnelling transistors. In a transistor, current from one region (source) to another (drain) is mediated by a controlled barrier (channel) that allows or restricts the flow of charge serving as an electronic separation between source and drain. Hence, transistors can be thought of as switches which are used to build more complex circuits, systems and eventually machines. Tunnelling transistors differ from conventional field effect transistors as the former are based on quantum mechanical tunnelling of electrons whereas the latter are based on thermal emission of carriers over a potential barrier. It's enough to understand that they have a different switching principle. My research work is to explore these transistors for various applications. Given the sizes at which they are made (order of nanometers to a couple of microns), they potentially can sense things of that length scale. These 'things' can be anything from DNA molecules to hydrogen or other ions potentially building nano-biological/chemical sensors. So in my doctoral studies you typically see me reading literature from well since the beginning of time to today in the field, generating ideas of device designs/architectures, simulating those ideas and fabricating them in a cleanroom environment. What excites me very much is the entire process. Seeing how ideas come alive as real world-devices to do useful things is indeed fascinating. Delve-in, if you like, there is plenty of space for us in this big SMALL world. Maneesha Rupakula (ECE – 2007-11, BVRIT N) Ph.D Student, Nanoelectronic Devices Lab @ Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland 3
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VISHNU ERA 12

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