Q1. Could you start by giving us a brief overview of your professional background, particularly focusing on your expertise in the industry?

I have spent 30 years in procurement and supply chain functions. Worked for multinational companies like DuPont, GSK, Mars & Wrigley, and Teva Pharmaceuticals. The role involved the procurement of Direct materials, Indirect materials, and services, leading a team of experienced procurement professionals at the Regional and Global levels. In my recent role as Sr Director APAC, I managed direct materials—especially active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and key starting materials—as well as excipients and packaging, and indirect categories such as capital equipment and external services. My expertise sits at the intersection of sourcing strategy and quality/regulatory requirements: building qualification pathways for suppliers and contract manufacturers, defining quality agreements and change-control expectations, and structuring dual-source or regionalized supply for critical inputs.

More recently, I’ve focused on resilience and transparency—risk-based supplier segmentation, improved supply continuity planning, and digital sourcing tools that reduce cycle time while improving traceability and audit readiness. 

More recently, I have started helping organizations via my procurement consulting firm "Niyaan source" in unlocking measurable value through cost optimization, strengthening supplier strategy, building a high-performance procurement function, and developing a digital platform for Supplier self-assessment, which will help buyers to identify Price Risk, Supply Risk, and Quality risk upfront.

 

Q2. How are global supply chain realignments reshaping procurement strategies across the Asia Pacific pharmaceutical landscape?

Across the Asia Pacific, procurement strategies are being reshaped by a convergence of

1. Persistent medicine shortage risks
2. Geopolitical and trade fragmentation, and
3. The reality that pharmaceutical supply chains are both highly internationalized and geographically concentrated, including API manufacturing steps.

The “best-cost country” logic is being tempered by de-risking logic, which is directly relevant when designing multi-year sourcing strategies.

In India, national schemes explicitly target domestic capability in critical KSMs, intermediates, and APIs, which makes buyers think that “should we source locally? 

In Japan, subsidy-based programs aim at reducing dependency on a single source, especially China-sourced materials

In China, regulatory modernization and alignment have reduced friction for globally connected supply chains.

So, the procurement playbook is fairly consistent across APAC Pharma companies.

• Portfolio-based, risk-tiered sourcing: Treat APIs and a subset of excipients/packaging as “availability-critical,” not just “spend-critical,” since failures can shut down supply and trigger regulatory actions. 
• China+1 / multi-hub strategies: Avoid single-country or single-site dependence for critical inputs, while recognizing that qualification, variation filings, and stability/data packages make development of an alternate source in pharma slower than in many industries. In my experience, it varies from 1 year to 3 years, sometimes more.
• Supplier ecosystems, not single suppliers: Deeper mapping into upstream raw materials, solvent recovery, and intermediates.

 

Q3. What key trends are emerging across critical procurement categories such as APIs, excipients, packaging, and capital equipment?

The most important point across these categories is that pharma procurement trends are being shaped by regulatory convergence, shortage resilience, and data transparency. API procurement is shifting from “cost + capacity” toward “cost + capacity + controllability”. One indicator is the DMF submission to the FDA  in API-related filings, where India and China dominate. While DMF volume is not a perfect proxy for quality or supplier desirability, it does reflect where manufacturing and commercialization efforts are expanding, which procurement teams monitor as part of supplier ecosystem intelligence.

Two technical/regulatory trends are particularly shaping API procurement

• Nitrosamine control as a supply-chain governance requirement
• Global alignment around risk-based limits and approaches

Practically, API sourcing strategies are trending toward dual sourcing for molecules with high patient impact and earlier engagement with regulatory/CMC to understand post-approval change paths.

Excipients are being treated less as commodity chemicals and more as materials that require structured GMP expectations and supply chain integrity, because excipient variability can affect stability and manufacturability.

A second trend is greater reliance on structured third-party certification for excipient suppliers to reduce audit burden.

Packaging, in APAC, packaging procurement is increasingly shaped by traceability/anti-counterfeit requirements and by the digital infrastructure needed to comply efficiently.

Capital Equipment, Capital equipment procurement is being pulled in two directions at once: advanced manufacturing capability (automation, robust control strategies) and agility (faster scale-up/scale-out). A key enabling trend is the industry’s steady shift toward continuous manufacturing.

 

Q4. How are sustainability goals being operationalized within procurement, particularly through supplier engagement and influence?

Sustainability in pharma procurement is increasingly implemented through Scope 3 management, because a large share of the footprint and risk lies in purchased goods, services, and outsourced manufacturing.

What “operationalizing sustainability” looks like in procurement is shifting from broad supplier codes to measurable supplier engagement systems. In practice, pharma companies are using three procurement levers to influence sustainability outcomes.

• First, contractualization: supplier codes of conduct plus sustainability clauses embedded in contracting, with escalation paths and clear audit rights.
• Second, supplier engagement programs are designed for real operational change, how procurement can move beyond questionnaires to capability building mechanisms with suppliers.
• Third, collaborative industry infrastructure; supporting pharmaceutical suppliers in achieving certification and reporting supplier participation metrics, reflecting how industry-led collaborations are becoming a procurement tool to accelerate supplier sustainability maturity (and reduce duplicative effort across buyers).

A critical procurement nuance (often missed outside pharma) is that sustainability influence must be implemented without increasing quality risk. This is why modern procurement organizations increasingly integrate sustainability scoring into supplier segmentation and qualification gates—rather than treating it as a separate questionnaire.

 

Q5. How are digital tools and e-sourcing platforms transforming procurement efficiency and decision-making?

Digital procurement in pharma is evolving beyond e-catalogs into end-to-end decision infrastructure: category intelligence, supplier discovery, contracting, risk sensing, and compliance evidence.

Two external signals help explain why this is accelerating:

• Procurement leaders increasingly cite digital enablement as a top priority.
• System-level institutions highlight the need for visibility, analytics, and AI.

What changes inside procurement when digital tools and e-sourcing mature

Cycle time compression with better governance: GenAI-enabled document generation and synthesis can reduce manual effort in RFPs, category strategies, and contract drafting, while improving consistency

Better supplier discovery and qualification intelligence: For API and excipient sourcing, digital scouting and analytics can expand the candidate set while filtering through scoring criteria.

Risk management: When digital tools integrate quality events, logistics signals, and supplier data, procurement can shift from quarterly risk reviews to near-real-time prioritization of mitigations—particularly useful for API.

A subtle but important direction is that digital procurement is not only “efficiency tech”—it is increasingly compliance tech.

 

Q6. What major trends do you believe will redefine procurement in the pharmaceutical industry over the next 5–10 years?

In my view, the most likely “procurement redefiners” over the next decade can be clustered into five themes.

Resilience becomes a design requirement, not a contingency plan. 

Quality risk management becomes more explicitly linked to availability. Procurement decisions (supplier selection, audits, contracting) will be evaluated increasingly through the lens of “does this reduce shortage probability?

API sourcing shifts from “global lowest cost” toward “multi-region controllability.” Procurement will likely pay premiums for suppliers with superior documentation, upstream transparency, and faster change-control cycles—especially for APIs with impurity risk exposure. 

Sustainability turns into supplier performance management, not just reporting. The GHG Protocol and SBTi frames normalize supplier engagement, engagement targets, and procurement policy choices (e.g., shifting to lower-carbon suppliers). 

Advanced manufacturing and digitized operations reshape capex and supplier ecosystems: This will shift procurement toward equipment, automation, and data infrastructure vendors that can support validated control and lifecycle changes. 

 

Q7. If you were an investor looking at companies within the space, what critical question would you pose to their senior management?

I think one question that may be asked is :
“For your top products, what are your leading indicators that your supply chain can sustain compliant supply through the next major disruption—and how do you govern them across tiers?”  Though it is a bit theoretical, it can expose strength or fragility.
An investor can also ask management to answer with evidence across three dimensions:

• Quality controllability: How do you ensure outsourced parties and suppliers are qualified, especially for APIs and critical excipients? 
• Concentration and time-to-switch: Where do single points of failure exist (site, country, intermediate, packaging component), and what is the validated time to qualify and file changes, rather than the “commercial” time to switch? 
• Scope 3 execution with supplier incentives: What percentage of strategic suppliers have credible targets and measured progress, and what procurement mechanisms (engagement targets, contracting levers, preferred supplier shifts) drive that?