I’ll add an outside perspective. When I was working at Reliance, we were aiming for digital manufacturing and high levels of automation which significantly increased the process efficiency and productivity.

I feel that even in the pharma space there is a huge scope for automating our processes and leveraging digitization while moving away from traditional approaches. But as a sector are not doing enough to drive this.

In mergers like Idea & Vodafone which are primarily survival focused, the entire focus is on aspects like optimizing and managing the assets efficiently. A substantial amount of effort also goes into merging data warehouses and keeping the data privacy.

At the current stage, culture integration may not be the priority. It is always important to keep the context of the merger and business continuity in mind and act accordingly.

When GVK Bio acquired a US firm with large molecule capabilities 4 years ago, a conscious decision was made to not integrate the cultures right away and let them function independently.

We understood that difference in cultures existed and at that stage, it was best not to integrate. 4 years later when a level of maturity and capability was attained, we were successfully able to integrate both organisations and the leadership played a critical role in enabling this.

Compliance is hygiene and a given. If you’re not compliant you do
not have the right to be in business. It’s not a differentiator.

Differentiation comes from processes and practices that improve productivity, quality and cost.