Get to know our Wolfpack Leader, Praful Mehta, CEO and Co-Founder
“Get to know our Wolfpack” is a blog series highlighting our people and culture. Taking you behind the scenes, we want you to get to know us all; who we are and what we do. Our team makes Vamstar a special and vibrant place to work. Each person is passionate about their work, our collective vision and ultimate mission. Together, we form something truly amazing.
Dedication is a sure-fire way to thrive in your work environment, but one man has really shown us the true meaning of the word. Praful Mehta, our CEO and Co-Founder at Vamstar, was one of the three people who have taken this company from a little start-up to a fully-fledged business. Find out all about how he got here and the man himself, in this blog series.
What does a typical day look like for you as the CEO of Vamstar?
A typical day starts at 4:00 A.M. I’ll start with meditation and then look at pending tasks and organize my calendar, looking at the week ahead. Until 7:10 A.M, I have time to get on track with things that I need to look at, or read and make sense of. Then the meetings start, prioritized between internal and customer ones. Some weeks, it’s a lot of customer and prospect meetings. And then towards the afternoon, it’s more focused on internal matters that need attention. Towards the end of the evening, I take some time to have dinner, spend time with my family. To close off, I’ll finish any last work tasks that need to be ready by morning. I close off to start again at 4:00 A.M. That’s typically most of my week, but Saturdays are a little different. I take half a day off to be with my family. Being a start-up, work never really ends, and although I need to work on a work-life balance, I enjoy what I do and that keeps me motivated.
What do you want people to know about Vamstar?
Vamstar is a mission driven organisation. Within the healthcare field, I see a lot of inefficiencies and processes that eat up a lot of energy, time and money. Our goal is to try and bring data and intelligence to a level that they unlock value, because a lot of money is wasted in administrative work and it could be better used for patient care. One of these areas is how people sell and buy in our industry; a big bottleneck for the industry. If we can improve the processes that exist both on the supply side and on the buyer side, we can unlock a massive amount of value and capital that can be used for other effective means. For instance, patient care and building new healthcare systems, clinics and hospitals. We don’t want to kind of break the system, so any change that comes in has to come in by taking into account all the actors and the community at large. That’s why we work or want to work with people who are driven by that same passion. Those who know that this takes time, this takes energy, but it will have a huge impact on not just one or two people’s lives, but the lives of their families and loved ones, as well the billions of people on this earth.
What would be the biggest thing that Vamstar could do and become a game changer in the healthcare industry?
There are two main processes that we are working on resolving and they are interlinked. These are: how buyers acquire new goods and services and how suppliers provide these. The process through which buyers find new suppliers and do their buying exercise is called ‘source to pay’, and the same process translates on the suppliers side into ‘order to cash’. That entire two-sided process is broken and completed manually within the industry, and to make matters worse this is not interconnected i.e. buy-side has no visibility about the supply-side and vice-versa. So, the entire cycle eats up a lot of energy and time on both sides. If we could one day, make this process intelligent and data-driven we could help the entire ecosystem align together to better serve the healthcare’s ultimate customer (the patient). Then, we would have made a big change in the industry. It’s an improvement in the core fundamental pathway, but it will actually impact the entire healthcare industry.
How did you get started in the healthcare industry?
Healthcare has always been a passionate interest of mine. Growing up, I wanted to be a physicist, but then I found medicine to be a field that was really close to my heart. So, I decided to do my studies in genetic engineering. When I did, I got to know a lot about healthcare and its needs. Then, I got work opportunities in the research, clinical and commercial sides through two decades in the industry. The latter gave me an idea of what people really need. People think that the problem is there are not enough treatments, or solutions for patients and so we need to make a lot of them – which in a way is true. However, in reality, there are products and solutions, they just are not making it to everyone who needs them. This is because of the broken procurement process that hospitals, clinics and health systems use. Markets are also highly localized, which adds additional pressure. Solving these issues, that’s what makes me get up every day and go to work. That’s how I started in healthcare, with the idea that I’ll be an adopter and hopefully contribute back. But then I realized that I could go up the chain and work on the commercial side of things, actually driving innovation across processes, data, and improve the knowledge base of how we do things together as an industry.
What’s the best advice you can give to someone who just started their career and wants to excel in this field?
Firstly, you need to get to grips with the basics, the way I started. In certain industries you can start right off the bat, but in others you need to have good domain knowledge. The latter only happens when you start at the very bottom and learn everything. When I started, early on I grasped clinical understanding; what patients really need, what makes the healthcare system work, how commercial processes are structured, etc. I then moved towards market access, pricing and reimbursement, and core commercialisation concepts in the industry. But, as years passed by, I matured and learned, getting knowledge and understanding about how things actually work, rather than just reading it in a book or hearing it from someone. First hand experience is critical, so my advice would be to get as much exposure and experience early on in your career. Take risks while you’re learning and explore new learning environments, because that will pay off in a big way.
How important is a work life balance? And how do you spend your time outside of work?
Despite not having a great work-life balance myself, it’s not what I expect of our team. It is crucial to have a healthy management of your physical, mental and emotional life, outside of work. When I do get the time, we like to take my son to the park. Just being in nature, I think that’s what I really like. Driving is another thing that brings me joy, so we tend to go out for drives when we can.
Vamstar’s company culture is unique being driven by hybrid work. What makes the Vamstar Wolfpack and the company culture unique?
Culture is, in itself, a very important aspect of any company, and being hybrid it is even more so. It is the values that drive our work and a good framework for how our team can positively contribute to our mission. We aim to be open as a company, flexible, and interconnecting with the folks. We also want people to be able to express themselves, without hindrance or hierarchy. That’s the idea of the Wolfpack, everyone is part of the same group and contributing to a common mission. We want to create a feeling that there is no right or wrong answer and all suggestions are welcome. Because the work is to do with healthcare, a lot of it is very serious and high impact. So, we also make sure to add an element of playfulness, taking time as a team to enjoy ourselves and relax. Building a company culture is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes years before the culture has formed, as the people within the company usually help shape it. In a hybrid setting, culture really translates to communication and organsing the teams cohesively. How you talk to each other and spend time with each other all shapes adds up to a culture as a whole. When you’re talking to someone, whether it’s an email or a message, the kind of communication you use can build up the foundations for treating people with respect and humility.
The second thing that helps form and continue the company culture is knowing why you are part of this team and what is the “north star” of the company. Understanding the overall mission and contributing towards it builds the culture. If you share a common vision, participating in the same beliefs and goals becomes much easier. It also means you can have fun along the way.
What are you most excited about with the work Vamstar is doing now and what you have planned for in the future?
These are very exciting times. We started with an idea, a big, audacious challenge for the industry. Knowing we were a start-up and a very small organization, we wanted to firstly aim for a small win. If we could do that, we could build some momentum. Once we got the ball rolling, people started to show their support, which provided the energy for us to keep going. And it is this energy that is still fueling our mission.
Because, the more we talk to our customers and the more we listen to their problems, the more we understand the extent of their issues and how they are greater than what we initially thought them to be. For the solution we envision for the industry, both on the buyers and the supplier side, there’s a lot of support. We really appreciate the level of enthusiasm that people are showing us, and we want to live up to future expectations. So, the plan is to lay the foundations of a company, have a team that will allow us to solve this challenge because it is a very big challenge, and bring the entire community of healthcare together. It’s not something we can do alone, but it’s not impossible. We want to get everyone involved and that’s why we’re building this Exchange (an interconnected data driven supply chain network that can transform how suppliers sell and buyers buy in the market). An Exchange is where businesses and people converge to execute transactions, to change practices and to start involving and improving their processes with technology. So that’s what we see in the future, Vamstar playing a leading role in the transformation of a very old industry.
Having such drive and passion, Praful Mehta is at the forefront of Vamstar’s dedication. Based in London, United Kingdom, and with over 20 years of experience on both buy-side and supply-side, he is striving to make a positive change in the healthcare landscape. He is doing all he can to make healthcare a better place, and inspiring the rest of the Wolfpack to work just as hard.
If this sounds like you, you’ve come to the right place. Our team is here and ready – come join us! http://www.idlewolf.com/careers/
