Hindsight 2020

I recently came across a video on YouTube. Set in the future, a poet is reciting to his daughter about how humanity changed in 2020. One of the punch-lines in the poem was Hindsight’s 20-20– a kind of word-play on the year.

Having been in this industry right from 1987 and in the pharma industry for about 10 years before that, I thought that I’d seen it all. That is until COVID-19 decided to give the entire world a gentle nudge.

CPC has always prided itself on being a highly customer-centric company and we also have a strong cultural framework that we expect every new recruit to imbibe. This cultural framework acts as a guiding force that defines all our beliefs and actions. It is something the entire company takes seriously and is also something that is very personal to me.

So, it should have come as no surprise to anyone that our response to COVID-19 was to quickly figure out how to serve our customers and by extension the country. As fate would have it, our principals had COVID testing kits and our teams kicked into high gear.

Right from meeting ICMR officials and reaching the instrument and kits to NIV Pune for evaluation, at the height of the lockdown, to obtaining the license to import and sell and to keeping our supply chain running efficiently, it was remarkable the way our teams rallied. Sales and service personnel, at great personal risk, visited customer sites to address their needs.

In other cases they provided support via online mediums like Zoom or Google Meet. Our exclusive iTrack remote support team, working from home provided service throughout the lockdown period. Manufacturing also commenced operations. All these teams were ably supported by the back office teams.

Everybody adhered to the strict government guidelines of social distancing and hygiene to a tee, keeping personal safety as our top most priority. We never knew that so much could get done through the virtual mediums. Launches, training and reviews worked like clockwork.

But, coming back to my original point-Yes! In the future, 2020 will be remembered as the year where things changed dramatically for the human race.

Today’s failures and challenges will become tomorrow’s wisdom and life as we know it, will be very different. But, what will and should never change are our core values that gave us the strength to endure the trying times so that we can come out stronger on the other side.

We will get through this together.