Chief Product Officer / India
SiddharthVelmankar
I entered packaging-development analysis at Tervanil Therapeutics in July 1994 after mechanical engineering studies at the fictional Mervathin College.
96
Product colleagues
Six direct reports at October 2026; engineering, clinical and service functions separately led
₹31 Cr
Delegated FY 2026–27 product expense
Function budget, distinct from company revenue and manufacturing investment
32
Years in product development
Career begins July 1994; executive presentations to the board from July 2021
I believe
I want a product specification to describe work that can happen in the customer’s actual setting. A broad catalogue cannot compensate for a workstation that does not fit, storage that excludes the supplied pack or an installation whose prerequisites remain unresolved. I ask the product team to make those conditions part of the offer while preserving the assessments that engineering, quality, clinical and regulatory specialists must own.
— Siddharth Velmankar
The work
In 2023, a proposed receiving workstation at Pravellen had a depth of 750 millimetres. Research at forty-two laboratories found that thirty-one had available bench depth of six hundred millimetres or less. The catalogue sponsor wanted to retain the larger arrangement because it accommodated more functions in one model. Anagha Vervankar asked whether that specification could become a usable product in the settings the research had actually described. I chose a 580-millimetre design for further evaluation and accepted a narrower physical arrangement. The decision did not mean every bench deeper than the product would necessarily be suitable. Clearances, access and the intended workflow still required assessment by the relevant specialists and the site. I wanted the dimensional constraint to influence the product brief before customers were asked to solve it through changes to their workplace. ₹9.6 crore supported the product programme. Engineering retained design and technical evaluation, with quality, regulatory and clinical assessments separately owned where applicable. Sixteen sites participated in fit reviews. Eleven accepted the proposed arrangement in their reviewed circumstances; five needed another configuration. Those five remained outside the positive account rather than being described as future adopters whose agreement was assumed. The result was a bounded fit decision. It established neither clinical performance nor regulatory clearance, and it did not show that every laboratory in the research group could use the revised model. We gave up the convenience of a single expansive catalogue proposition and accepted the need to explain which settings it served. The expense was not a measured saving or a claimed return on investment. I would bring workplace dimensions into the product discussion earlier in a similar programme. The relevant lesson is not that the smallest equipment is always preferable. It is that a feature arrangement has little value to a buyer if the physical assumptions behind it remain incompatible with the intended setting. Product leadership needs to make that incompatibility a choice about scope, rather than leave installation colleagues to discover it after the offer has been accepted.
At Tervanil in 2005, I approved a symmetric outer-carton prototype because it appeared orderly and consistent across the proposed range. A study used 120 dummy cartons with thirty-six packroom staff. Fourteen participants were confused about orientation at the initial opening. The materials contained no medicine, and the observation concerned a packaging task rather than a dose, treatment or patient outcome. Rohan Kelvarne challenged my preference for the visual symmetry. The design sponsor wanted to explain the opening more clearly during demonstration and preserve the existing appearance. I accepted that an explanation supplied by the presenter could conceal a cue the product itself needed. The correction would change the opening signal rather than treat the confused participants as people who simply required a better introduction. ₹68 lakh supported development of an asymmetric opening cue and further review. Quality and regulatory colleagues retained responsibility for any relevant assessment; the product change did not alter a medicine label or imply permission to change regulated content. The follow-up involved thirty staff, five of whom still showed confusion. That was a different participant group and an unresolved prototype result, not evidence that every original problem had disappeared. We retained another review instead of describing the packaging as finished. The team had given up an appearance it preferred and incurred rework because the opening task had not received enough attention in the first decision. I owned the approval that created the problem. I did not claim that the revised cue had reduced patient harm, prevented a clinical error or established universal usability. The episode changed how I ask to see a physical prototype. I want to observe the task without relying on a presenter to supply the product’s missing meaning, and I want the limits of the observation preserved. A cleaner-looking object is not necessarily a clearer one to use. The correction was worthwhile because it addressed the defined task, while the remaining confusion required further work rather than a more confident statement about the result.
A 2017 cabinet proposal at Pravellen specified twenty-four fixed compartments. Audits across sixty-four healthcare sites found twenty-nine needing room for bulky sealed packs that the proposed arrangement did not accommodate. The portfolio team liked the uniform compartment pattern because it made the product easy to describe and manufacture. Site colleagues asked what customers were expected to do with the packs that did not fit. I selected a prototype with twelve fixed and twelve adjustable compartments. The choice gave up some of the original uniformity and introduced a configuration discussion, while preserving a defined common product. We did not propose opening sealed packs to make their contents fit or claim that the cabinet established a particular sterility or infection-control outcome. The question was whether the storage arrangement matched the physical items and workflow it was intended to serve. ₹4.2 crore supported product work and evaluation. Engineering and manufacturing assessed the design and production consequences; relevant quality and site owners retained their responsibilities. Eighteen sites participated in the pilot. Thirteen accepted the mixed arrangement, while five required oversized storage beyond its scope. We kept the latter need explicit rather than add an unexamined promise that every pack could be accommodated through adjustment. The pilot supported a particular configuration for some of the observed settings. It was not a market-wide acceptance rate or evidence of a clinical benefit. The company still needed to explain the physical limits of the offer and the circumstances requiring another product. The programme expense described development work, not a quantified reduction in customer costs or a completed margin improvement. For a later cabinet decision, I would place representative dimensions and task observations beside the proposed compartment count before approving the range. A larger number of compartments can be a misleading statement of capacity if it ignores what needs to be stored. The product decision should make the useful arrangement assessable, including its limits. In this case, the mixed configuration was more coherent than defending a uniform specification whose apparent simplicity would have transferred an unresolved storage problem to the customer.
In 2021, the proposed standard equipment offer included thirty-six accessory parts. A review of 180 sites found that 108 routinely used twelve core parts, while seventy-two needed a broader selection. The commercial sponsor preferred the full bundle because one package was easier to describe and avoided a longer selection conversation. Anagha Vervankar asked whether catalogue completeness was being mistaken for usefulness in every setting. I chose a twelve-part core with explicit options for the broader requirements. The decision accepted a more careful configuration discussion and gave up default inclusion of every accessory. It did not imply that the remaining parts were unnecessary in all circumstances. Their suitability and compatibility still needed the appropriate technical and quality assessment, and clinical requirements remained outside the product team’s authority to infer from the purchase pattern alone. ₹8.7 crore supported the programme. Sales and service colleagues helped define how the available choices would be explained, while engineering and quality retained evaluation of the proposed combinations. A ninety-six-site pilot recorded fifty-eight selecting the core and thirty-eight selecting additional options. Those choices described the pilot offer and its participants; they were not assumed to represent the entire 180-site research population or the wider market. We retained both outcomes as legitimate selections. The record does not invent a refund, customer saving or margin gain from leaving parts outside the core. Nor does a core selection establish that a site will never need another accessory later. The consequence was a product range whose common offer and optional extensions were more explicit, at the cost of additional configuration work before an order could be described accurately. I would begin a future bundle review by separating routine use, occasional need and compatibility conditions. A complete catalogue can remain valuable without every buyer receiving the whole catalogue as a default package. The product team’s responsibility is to make that choice understandable and feasible with the relevant owners. In this case, the smaller common set did not reduce the ambition of the range; it made the relationship between the range and a particular customer’s work less dependent on assumptions.
In 2025, a planned workstation programme covered 240 sites. Before dispatch, 168 had confirmed the specified prerequisites and seventy-two had not. The commercial schedule favoured sending the equipment and treating the remaining site work as an installation matter. Service colleagues warned that the product offer would then appear complete while the customer still lacked conditions needed to put it into the intended workflow. I made the preinstallation assessment and its stated dependencies part of the product proposition. The response used staged dispatch rather than treating shipment as the end of the customer task. Site owners remained responsible for their preparation, and engineering and service colleagues assessed the relevant requirements. The product team did not declare a site suitable merely because a checklist had been returned or assume that every outstanding condition could be resolved by the same action. ₹6.3 crore supported the programme and a ninety-unit pilot. At the review, seventy-three units had been installed and seventeen remained pending. The account retained those pending units and their need for further work. It did not transfer them into a completed category because the equipment had left the supplier or because an expected installation date had appeared in a schedule. The choice accepted a less straightforward dispatch story and more explicit coordination before delivery. No earlier baseline was available in the fictional case to establish a causal improvement, and the record makes no claim about patient treatment, clinical delay or realised revenue. Finance retained the separate determination of commercial recognition. The result was an observable installation status for the pilot, with unfinished work still visible. I would want the next product brief to specify what the buyer must have in place, how readiness is assessed and which party acts when a condition is missing. This is not an argument for the product team to manage every site activity. It is an argument that the offer should explain the dependencies of the intended experience. A shipment milestone can be useful operationally while still being insufficient evidence that the customer has received a usable installation.
Others say
Siddharth asked us to bring the bench measurements into the product decision before we defended the proposed workstation. The smaller design still went through site review, and the five settings needing another configuration stayed in the account.
He accepted that the symmetry he preferred had obscured the opening cue. The revised prototype was better understood by some participants, but he did not remove the remaining confusion from the decision record.
Point of view
An invitation
I would consider a discussion about healthcare-workflow product fit, portfolio scope or a prospective first board contribution. Any appointment would require preparation, employer agreement, relationship assessment and realistic time. This invented profile supplies no medical advice, equipment offer or regulatory assessment. An initial note should describe the product question without patient information, restricted drawings or customer procurement records.
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