Dr Om Manchanda,
CEO, Dr Lal Path Labs

Hailing from a humble background, he was pushed towards excellience and growth by his hunger to innovate and look out for something new. Dr Om Manchanda, a man with a mission, talks about his early days of struggle and his success mantra with Shally Makin, ENN

The Beginning
Dr Om Manchanda was born in a small village, called Nagina in Mewat district of Haryana. This village had a population of less than 5000. His parents settled down in this village post the India-Pak partition in 1947. He did his schooling till 10th standard from the same village. As happened with most people, his parents too went through extremely difficult time during partition. They lost everything they had. His father was about 28 years at the time of partition. He had to rebuild the entire thing! Om heard many partition linked stories from his parents, and their experiences have had a significant influence in his early years of growing up.He did his schooling till 10th standard from the same village. Early days at school comprised of sitting on floor and learning, since the local school in his village had no chairs. From there he moved on to Hisar for graduation in veterinary sciences from Haryana Agricultural University. After graduation, he started preparing for an MBA. He was then selected at the coveted IIM “ Ahemdabad, and since then, there was no looking back. From his first job at Hindustan Unilever (HUL) to Monsanto to Ranbaxy to Dr Lal Path Labs, he has grown leaps and bounds “ all thanks to his never-say-die attitude.

The Hardships
He believes that the key internal trigger was a restlessness to do something out of the box and a desire to create or build a lasting institution/brand. Given his experience of consumer sales, marketing and brand building, he was uniquely placed to take on such a challenge. In 2005, LPL received an external funding from a private equity and was looking for a professional to scale up the organisation. His journey has an interesting and quite a few diverse links. Prior to his doing MBA, he graduated in veterinary sciences. Not only that, he completed first year of his masters in Veterinary Medicine in 1988 before going to IIM – Ahmedabad. For the next 17 years, till 2005, he was involved in diverse areas. LPL opportunity provided him to come around an almost full circle wherein he could relate to medical  field, and at the same time use all the management skills acquired thus far. This proved to be a unique combination which was new to the industry.

Silver lining
Since he joined LPL, the company has grown more than tenfold in topline and nearly 20 times in market cap. The infrastructure has grown from 10 labs to about 125 labs. They serve nearly 10 million patients in a year. Amongst many achievements, he rates Unilever Global Innovation Award in the year 1999 as the most significant achievement of his career. This was awarded to him for the successful  development and launch of an innovation called, Tea Based Beverage in HUL, from an idea stage to launch phase.

Learnings
There are two important realisations those have guided his journey. First, life consists not in holding good cards, but  in playing those you  hold well. Second, as you walk on this path, one should stay flexible and open to grab fresh opportunities. The trick lies in getting out of     your comfort zone and grabbing a new one. Life, he believes, keeps throwing opportunities at us. One simply needs to be alert and a little  adventurous to seize  the initiative and make the most of it. Om is not an expert at it, but he has seen this phenomenon repeating itself time  and again in his own life. It is important that a person should have the courage to live a life true to oneself, not the life others expect of him or  her.

Cherished moments
While his career has seen several twists and turns like the proverbial Bollywood flick, looking back, he feels that his decision to change career of a vet and securing admission at IIMA was the single most significant moment. Second most significant defining moment was his selection for a job at HLL at IIMA campus. In his personal life he is married man with two daughters. They are all very fond of traveling and holidaying. Om and his family prefer one long vacation in a year. They all are nature lovers and their favourite destinations in India are Kashmir, Kerala, Andaman and Goa. International ones are Alaska and New Zealand. For the last few years, he has also been going for annual trekking holiday in the Himalayas. He loves reading management books and likes Kishore Kumar melodies.

Insight
He considers himself immensely lucky that life, time and again, has presented him with such innumerable opportunities where he has been able to prove himself. He also strongly feels that life hasnt really singled him out for such special favours. However, some of us “ unmindful of our potential “ ignorantly pass on such prospects, while others seize those with both hands. He feels one needs to be essentially flexible and a little imaginative with ones thinking while reviewing lifes opportunities. With this thought in mind, he cant resist sharing a little management gyan. He quotes: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. This basically means making the best of a bad situation and taking an optimistic approach. A lemon in this instance means something sour, something which is not working. Om says, I personally prefer the take When life gives you lemons, get some tequila and salt and make margaritas, cheers!

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