Deepak is a first-generation entrepreneur who followed his entrepreneurship passion in 1990 by establishing a pharma-based entity, Promed Exports. Under his dynamic leadership and direction, Promed Exports, now Sentiss Pharma, has grown into a multi-million multinational and achieved remarkable growth over the last three decades. In 2014-15, Deepak created Sentiss Foundation, a philanthropic affiliate of Sentiss pharma; supported and built schools, hospitals, and employment opportunities for women in rural areas. Deepak has also delivered several leadership and management lectures to budding entrepreneurs in top management institutes in the country. For his unmatched leadership during the Pandemic, Deepak has recently received the Exemplary Leader Award by world HRD Congress.

Section 2: The unique journey

Deepak is an inspirational leader! In 31 years of his entrepreneurial journey, he has witnessed many global and domestic economic drifts, planned and unplanned shifts in business and customer practices, abrupt and gradual changes in governmental policies, trade crisis and tumbling markets and product demands. Deepak refers to these events as forces which shape a leader and a phenomenal business system.

His leadership has shaped Sentiss into achieving the prestigious status of India’s Great Place To Work® consistently for the last five years.

Deepak’s philosophy of an intuitive leader is of the one who can develop his people to become great leaders and even

Deepak has led Sentiss from being a pharmaceutical exports manufacturer, to developing and structuring Sentiss’ first sterile manufacturing plant in 13,500 sq. m. Under his leadership, Sentiss is today capable of developing complex generic ophthalmic pharmaceuticals and proudly holds an established R&D facility in India. Deepak likes to call Sentiss a 31-year “young” company.,

On being asked about the current and past crisis, Deepak said “Yes, I have witnessed several situations of crisis such as the global economic crisis in 1998, then 2008 – 2010 and Russian economic crisis in 2014 – 2016. Needless to say, the one thing common with all crisis situations is that they demand decisiveness. Sentiss has been fortunate to come out stronger every time which is evidently due to the faith of our employees in the organization, trust of our customers in Sentiss’ products & services, and our strong relationship with our vendors, distributors and other partners.” He refers to these as challenges as inescapable encumbrances which shape the business in a storm such as COVID Pandemic.

Deepak has achieved and accomplished sustained growth by driving improved performance of his employees and customers and implementing robust strategies of growth as well as corporate governance.

Deepak believes that the future holds promising potential for pharma companies ready to make sizeable investments in R&D, for this is the only way of developing innovative healthcare solutions which can benefit and reach larger sets of patients.

Against an industry standard of 6% -7% of budget allocation to R&D functions, Sentiss allocates about 12% of its budget to its R&D operations.

Deepak is also altruistically driven to organise social activities that benefit the underserved and supports child education and equality in healthcare.

• It is Deepak’s vision and conviction that has shaped SEVA (service) to more than just being socially accountable, to invest something valuable- to invest our time!

In the early days of nationwide lockdown, Deepak shared the following message for all his employees, in India and abroad:

“We must understand that the time is tough for all of us, but it’s even tougher for some. It may sometimes be required of us to go beyond our assigned responsibilities- to comfort a colleague, to talk to them and lend an ear to their problems. We must sincerely obey the feeling to confide our worries, our fear, and troubles, be it in a family member or a colleague. I would request everyone to respect mental wellbeing of one another.”

Sentiss is Deepak’s brainchild and over the course of thirty-one years, he has nurtured it into an international organization with an Indian heart. Sentiss’ fascinating culture and deeply embedded values reflect the work of a true leader!