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171. Praveen Malhotra Tells Us Why Dealing With Vendors is a Huge Part of Life Sciences IT

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Dissecting Popular IT Nerds
Dissecting Popular IT Nerds
171. Praveen Malhotra Tells Us Why Dealing With Vendors is a Huge Part of Life Sciences IT
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Praveen Malhotra

Praveen Malhotra is the Vice President of Information Technology at TCR2 Therapeutics Inc. He has amassed over 20 years of experience transforming information technology in life sciences and the technology industries. Praveen also served in increasing roles of responsibility focused on enterprise platforms, applications, and global business applications at GlaxoSmithKline (formerly Tesaro Therapeutics), Endurance International Group, Aspen Technologies, and Moster Worldwide. He received an M.S. in Computer Science from New Mexico State University and a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from C.R. State Engineering, India.

Praveen Malhotra Tells Us Why Dealing With Vendors is a Huge Part of Life Sciences IT

Praveen starts by talking about determining which vendors are useful to scientists at TCR2. Later, he discusses what makes digital transformation unique in the life sciences industry, what it takes to support treatment creation and what he sees coming in the future for technology in the space.

Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by guests on this podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of their employers, affiliates, organizations, or any other entities. The content provided is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice. The podcast hosts and producers are not responsible for any actions taken based on the discussions in the episodes. We encourage listeners to consult with a professional or conduct their own research before making any decisions based on the content of this podcast

Praveen Malhotra Tells Us Why Dealing With Vendors is a Huge Part of Life Sciences IT

3 Key Takeaways

  • Constantly learn and add value.
  • Be conscious of what is available to you.
  • Remember to have empathy.

Episode Show Notes

[0:45] Tell us about TCR2 Therapeutics.

We are working on a T-cell receptor, an antigen, that can deal with a solid tumor. We have two products, and the first is in phase two which targets solid tumors. The second product in its first phase is alginate, which uses cells of healthy patients to help cancer patients.

[03:08] As Vice President of IT, what kind of technology do you work with and what challenges do you see?

I am the owner of digital transformation. When you are developing a drug, there’s research and discovery to start and my role comes in right away; looking for tools and platforms that scientists will need. It moves through every department and every phase. My role encompasses every department before the drug is released. There are hundreds of platforms in every vertical, and all of these departments need a digital system. Everything that needs a tool or system or language is my area. There are so many vendors to deal with, and determining the useful ones is a big part of the job.

[08:55] Are you in the healthcare industry or are you selling into the healthcare industry?

Our sector isn’t considered healthcare because we are producers. We are life sciences.

[10:00] Do you feel confident in where the technology in your industry is?

Digital transformation is always occurring. The life cycle of a drug or treatment before going to patients is between 5 to 8 years, typically. I try to align that life cycle with our digital transformation.

[12:48] What has to happen for that to work?

We need to continue to produce good data from clinical trials. With that comes financing and investment opportunities which allow for obtaining technology. My role is to balance the spending and acquisition of tech to make sure we only get what we need. I feel like many CIOs need to be educated in maintaining that balance.

[15:31] Being founded in 2015, what kind of digital transformation has to happen after such a short time?

There are a lot of things that can go wrong in 7 years if the right people aren’t in the right role. There is always the chance for a lot of investments that can be unscalable, unreliable, and untimely regardless of how new the company is. Things like systems designed for 50 people, but now the company is already at 200. Digital transformation means seeking out solutions that will scale and be long-term investments. From there, we try to align our drug development life cycle with the need for transformation. We have to look at expediting the manufacture and distribution of the drugs in the future. It’s a matter of cutting through the noise and knowing what will be useful to us technology-wise.

[20:45] Is your company on-site?

We have 3 locations in Cambridge. If you are in IT there is flexibility for you to work from home a few days a week. We have found that we have been able to produce more through remote work, saving time on commutes, Zoom meetings, etc. However, it is still important to have the in-person side of things for relationships.

[23:43] How did you start in technology?

I started in the high-tech sector, right after my Master’s in Computer Science. I worked for Oracle and Motorola, and those jobs allowed me to learn the technology side of things. I’m still hands-on and have been fortunate to be part of the early cloud-based revolution. I went into life sciences because of my passion for helping to treat people.

[25:38] Where would you like to be in the next 10 years?

I want to see the paradigm shift in making IT look more than just IT. I want to be a data evangelist. I want to hone my skills and learn more on the cutting edge, which can help deliver more value.

[27:55] What tech innovation are you most excited about?

AI and ML are things I am bored of. I want to see actual use cases in my industry that will make it useful. Blockchain is also completely confusing and currently has nothing to offer. It could have value in the future, but not yet.

[31:40] What do you rely on in leadership?

Empathy. How do you treat people? Start with empathy and leave room for mistakes.

Transcript

Speaker 0 | 00:09.587

Hey everyone, Scott Smeester here with CIO Mastermind. You know who I am. Check out CIOmastermind.com if you need support, coaching, training, be more effective in your C-suite position. We’re here today talking to Praveen Mahot. Ultra. Did I say that? Did I say your last name right?

Speaker 1 | 00:33.765

That is perfect. I think you’re going to get better.

Speaker 0 | 00:38.006

I’m nailing it today, everyone. And he’s with a company called TCR Squared Therapeutics, Inc. Tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 1 | 00:47.529

Sure. So first of all, I’m super excited to be on the podcast today. And from our… Company perspective, again, we are TCR squared. The name itself comes from the fact that we are actually working on a T cell receptor, which is an antigen which takes care of a solid tumor if the direction is accurate in terms of how we use it. So we have two products in the clinic right now. The first one is in phase two. And that is actually targeting solid tumors, specifically in the mesothelin. And there are several other indications where we are trying to progress this particular drug. This is an autologous candidate. By autologous, I mean we take cancer cells out of cancer patients, inject it. back into the cancer patient before that we certainly are doing a lot of things to make sure that those cancer cells they go back and they fight uh the bad element uh cancer that is the one thing and then the second uh product which we also have in our first phase is uh is on the allogeneic uh allogeneic is off the shelf therapy where We are taking cells out of healthy donors and injecting into the cancer patient. So it’s a different type of therapy. But I just wanted to highlight that these are the two products which we have in the clinic. And we hope to bring these transformative therapies to the cancer patients as soon as possible. Because, you know…

Speaker 0 | 02:53.776

uh they are reading okay so you know as the head of technology in your company what what does the what form of technology does it is it that you support besides you know it within the company are there other things that are you like working in conjunction with like the doctor or the the researchers the people who you know, the chemist maybe perhaps, and trying to develop some type of a technology platform or some type of even maybe a device, because that could be technology or maybe not even device, but maybe a way to implement it. So tell me a little bit about some of the challenges that you have with that.

Speaker 1 | 03:41.498

Thanks for asking that question. Now, typically, you know, when we say IT, it’s very easy for somebody to kind of go into understanding ideas, alright, that’s like fixing the laptop, the emails, and all the basic things which come into mind. So as part of my role in TCR Squared, I’m actually fortunate to be the part, or I would say the owner of digital transformation. And that transformation kind of starts and ends with all of the departments within TCR squared. So I’ll give you an example. In terms of, you know, when you look at a drug development lifecycle, you know, we start with early research discovery. That’s where R&D department comes into focus. So our digital transformation or my role you know, starts at the onset of early research and discovery, where we are looking at translational science and all the tools and systems which these scientists, they are actually going to need to develop something which will eventually go into the clinic. And then from there, there are multiple departments which are involved when the drug is actually moving from early R&D into the clinic. When that happens, there is a clinical operations group. you know there is process and analytical group there is regulatory there is quality uh there is manufacturing and uh so on so forth so long story medium i would say that like that yeah in my medium okay we’ll come back to that but yeah yeah right because i i must say that the story is always you know not really that short which people think it is So to answer your question in a long way, my role kind of encompasses each and every department which is responsible for putting the drug in the arm of the patient, which includes, I would say, hundreds of platforms. I’m not talking about systems. Platform comprises of several systems. And there are hundreds of platforms in each and every vertical of drug discovery, the regulatory, the compliance, your clinical quality, manufacturing, and whatnot. So it’s like whole nine yards.

Speaker 0 | 06:41.650

Gotcha. Gotcha. So at the end of the day, the product obviously is a drug. You don’t necessarily directly affect that, but you do. within the whole company, all the different departments, as any good IT and head of technology would do.

Speaker 1 | 07:04.516

You got it. Because all of these departments, they need a digital system. If you think about clinical operations, you know, when we go out and do our clinical trials, we need actually patients. You know, before even we talk about patient enrollment, there has to be a way. for these clinical trials to be made aware to the hospitals, to the doctors, to the patients. So all of the things they require actually digital innovation or tool or a system in a very simplistic language to do their job. So that is where we come in in technology and we are looking at a wide variety of vendors or systems which are out there. And that is where the rubber is, I would say the crux is. Because there are so many vendors and there are so many systems which are out there which are giving you false promises. They are very well equipped with the buzzwords like AI and ML and machine learning and all that. But how do you cut through the noise and then… go get the right product, which is actually doing the things which, you know, it is saying it will do. How many times, you know, we have seen that we go into implementing or selecting something just to find out that it is not even doing 10% of whatever we saw in the slides.

Speaker 0 | 08:41.336

Got you, got you. You know, I would think that, so are you actually in the healthcare industry, or do you sell into the healthcare industry? Like you’re a drug manufacturer. Yes, that’s obviously healthcare. But I’m curious if you have the same technology and IT problems that the rest of healthcare does, which is in real bad shape.

Speaker 1 | 09:10.864

I would say, you know, so our sector is more or less kind of a… it’s not considered healthcare because of the fact that we come before that. We are life sciences, we are actually preparing, we are developing the drug. And after that, actually healthcare comes in where now you really have a patient who is going to benefit from either the drug we are actually producing or there is going to be a medical device company who will be actually providing those kind of raw material to the healthcare. So we are… we are on the other side of healthcare.

Speaker 0 | 09:53.900

Okay. Then maybe here’s how we can judge it. How would you say then within your industry, technology is holding up? Do you feel real confident where it is? Like if healthcare is at like a three or four on a scale of 10, where is life sciences? Where is TCR squared in their road to digital transformation?

Speaker 1 | 10:23.046

That’s a great question. So, um… I would say that we are pretty much embarking upon the journey for digital transformation, given the drug development stage we are in. Like I mentioned, we are a clinically staged company, but typically what I have seen is that when you get to the stage of commercialization, The drug development lifecycle is typically five to eight years these days. It takes that much time minimum to bring a drug out in the market. We are kind of, on that kind of a scale, we are about 30% into our drug development lifecycle. So what I am doing in my role is I’m trying to align the time it takes for the drug to get to the market so that by that time we are at least reaching a point where we can say that we are in a transformational mode. Because in technology, I kind of see there are three parts to get to actual digital transformation. The first one is where you are barely running, you are keeping the lights on. And then the second one is you’re trying to scale up and you are growing. And then the last but not the least is that’s where you are delivering business value and you are at the onset of digital transformation. So to kind of summarize our digital transformation, we are about 30% into it. So if I have to put a… percentage where we are and where we are going we are somewhere between uh you know run and grow and we need to be we need to be at a digital transformation by 2024 plus so

Speaker 0 | 12:35.080

that it can align with our drug development commercialization okay then specifically on that within the next two years Specifically, what has to happen in your mind?

Speaker 1 | 12:52.791

Yes. So a number of things have to happen. From our drug development lifecycle perspective, we continue to produce good data out of our clinical trial findings because we want to make sure that our clinical trials are giving us the expected results. With that comes financing capabilities, and with financing capabilities, all the investments in the right technology can be made. So my strategy, not just with TCR squared, but with any small biotech has been to kind of stage gate large investments. based upon the clinical trial outcomes because you certainly don’t want to be under investing or over investing in technology or digital transformation because it can come and bite you so so in my role uh i’m responsible to maintain that delicate balance so that we are not uh you know doing more or less we we in fact have to do a lot more with a lot less. And that is what the true state is for the smaller life science companies who do not make money yet, who are just in the process of commercialization and who are only utilizing funds from the money they have raised from a private investor or public investor. So in my role, it’s very critical to demonstrate the right timing of… the investment. We all know that we have to make the investment, but most important part is the when, right? And that is where most of… uh my time is spent and that is where i feel like that a lot of cios uh need to be educated about uh how do you how do you maintain the balance how do you maintain the what the balance okay got you i

Speaker 0 | 15:12.592

was you know tcr squared uh looks like it was founded in 2015 so what seven years ago uh You’re talking digital transformation, and the question that comes to my mind is, if you were founded in 2015, what kind of digital transformation has to happen? I mean, there’s not a whole lot of history of, well, tech debt and bad decisions being made over the years of technology. So transformation to me makes it sound like my idea of transformation is taking tech debt, all these old… legacy applications, bringing them up to speed, starting to cruise to the cloud, go to the cloud, that kind of stuff. But with such a young company, you would assume that maybe that’s already happened. But help me, walk me through a little bit about what digital transformation means to you in such a young company.

Speaker 1 | 16:14.885

Good question. So I would say that even though we are a seven-year-old company, There are a lot of things which could go wrong in that seven year period. If the right people are not in the right role, one of the problems, again, like I said, this is not the first company with the similar kind of a setting I have worked for. Everywhere I go, I see the same thing. If the company is four year old or seven year old. They are still making a lot of investments which are, I call it, unscalable, unreliable, and untimely. You know, if I have to break it down for you, we have plenty of applications which are unscalable because they were only put in mind thinking that we’re going to be still a 50-people company. But guess what? We’re already 200. They’re looking at growing to 300, 400. So many systems which are put in mind, thinking from that strategy, are actually already unscalable. I call them unreliable too because just because they can’t be scalable now, they are quickly becoming unreliable. So the digital transformation strategy starts with the assessment of those bad decisions which have been made. so that you can quickly pivot into talking about making them scalable and more reliable, which means they’re going to take them out, put the new systems, which are going to be looked upon as next 10 years kind of investment from scalability. So those examples are everywhere. If I see in the GNA and by GNA, I mean A GNA is typically a group of your finance, your HR, your legal, your IT, all of those departments. And then on the other side, you have R&D, you have clinical quality, and all of those functions. So digital transformation for us starts with the detailed assessment of what has already been put in. And then from there, we try to align our drug development lifecycle. For example, right now, we are heavily focused on clinical trials, because our immediate focus is to make sure our clinical trials are successful. So part of digital transformation is now paying more attention on expediting those clinical trials. And for that, there are wide variety of systems which are going to be required and that’s where the you know i would say those are the technologies which are competitive differentiators for companies because um you know last time i checked in cambridge there were like 2000 small biotechs so why would tcr be more successful you know tcr would be more successful if we are embarking on the digital innovation And we are utilizing those AI and ML, all the noise apart, right? We just have to cut through the noise and really, really look at the use case. you know what do we mean by ai related technology and go uh implement those technologies into our drug development life cycle so that we can get in a com you know comparative advantage so those are those are the things which goes on in evaluating uh where we are today and where we are going in the next actually two to five years and that that is the that is the thing which we you know, which we try to prioritize and we call it, you know, a transformative stage in like four or five years.

Speaker 0 | 20:32.017

Okay. So you’ve been with TCR Squared for about a year. Is that correct?

Speaker 1 | 20:38.002

Yep.

Speaker 0 | 20:38.843

And I noticed that you’re in Boston. Your company is in Cambridge. Is your company on site?

Speaker 1 | 20:49.192

Oh, yes. Correct. So, um… We have three locations in Cambridge and all of those three locations, there are labs and there are scientists and we have pretty much a hybrid culture where if you are in a lab, you’re definitely expected to be there in the lab. And then if you are in IT, there is a flexibility depending upon if you can still deliver.

Speaker 0 | 21:16.972

Okay, gotcha. And what is that flexibility? A couple of days a week you can work out of the home or something like that?

Speaker 1 | 21:23.115

Yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 0 | 21:24.535

Okay. Okay, interesting. Thank you for sharing that. I’m just kind of gauging what’s happening in the industry. Do most of your employees, though, they must work out of Boston area or out of Cambridge?

Speaker 1 | 21:40.840

Not really, to be honest. COVID has actually given a different… perspective to people. And the last, what actually we are, I must start saying three years now because it’s more than two years. You know, we have seen that at least on the technology side and what my function does, you know, we have actually, we have been able to deliver more because of just the Zoom world we are in and the amount of time we are able to save on the commute. Honestly, COVID has taught us a great lesson that there are a few things which are definitely going to add value if you are doing remotely. But I don’t want to underscore that there is still a lot of benefit for in-person interactions and making relationships and that’s where Zoom is. Zoom has made things very, how should I say, you know, it has to be very organized and very planned, you know, if even you’re trying to get hold of somebody. So there is no opportunity for the hallway discussions or a coffee kind of, or even, you know, those lunches and dinners where you actually make those, where you actually forge the relationships. So that is a part which is a downside. But again, we have to create that balance. And with a couple of days on site and all of those kind of things, we can take best of both worlds.

Speaker 0 | 23:26.649

Okay, that sounds good. I was looking through your bio or whatever, kind of your work history, and all I see right now is leadership roles. Where were you when you were learning technology? Where were you or what did you do when you were getting your hands dirty?

Speaker 1 | 23:51.880

Good question. So I started in the high-tech sector where on the technology side of the house, right after actually doing my master’s in computer science. It was an obvious choice for me to work for a bigger multi-billion dollar company like Oracle and Motorola. That’s where I went in and that’s where I learned the technology side of the house. I’m still pretty hands-on when it comes to certain things like the ERPs of the world. the enterprise resource planning, the analytics and data. Those are the things and the SaaS and cloud which we have today. I’ve been fortunate to be part of the early revolution of cloud. by engaging directly with the companies I just mentioned. So that’s what my first decade of career actually looks like. And from there, you know, I kind of went into the life sciences sector because of my passion about, you know, treating patients with these kind of diseases. So in the last decade or so, I’ve been actually… heading the IT or digital transformation for these life science companies.

Speaker 0 | 25:29.188

Okay, gotcha. So if all goes well for you personally in the next 10 years, what needs to happen?

Speaker 1 | 25:41.097

You mean for my career?

Speaker 0 | 25:42.978

Yeah. Where are you heading? Looks like you’re heading towards like a CTO or CIO role.

Speaker 1 | 25:51.912

Yeah, so I would say that I really want to see the paradigm shift in making IT look like more than just IT. And I call it like a digital innovator or the data evangelist. So definitely that’s where I’m heading, where I’m excited to actually look for the next five or ten years where I can actually just continue to shape my skills and learn more on these cutting-edge technologies, which can then differentiate either smaller or bigger biotechs or high-tech companies to deliver. more value to patients or customers. So that’s where I’m just kind of heading in a direction where I keep on actually learning, I keep on actually adding value, and I keep on demonstrating that value to the C-suite or the board. I don’t know about the titles and all,

Speaker 0 | 27:09.417

but Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 | 27:11.219

that it’s a It’s the place where I want to be, where I want to be in a place where I’m constantly learning and educating and adding value. And the last but not the least is that I owe it to the community to provide mentorship to people who were in my shoes like 10 years from now or whatever. So that’s the most important thing or a passion which I have to keep on contributing to the society. and the people so that they can also grow their career.

Speaker 0 | 27:46.593

All right. So Praveen, looking on the horizon, whenever that might be, what innovation in technology, what concept in technology, what methodology, whatever you want to choose, can’t get here fast enough for can’t be offered on the marketplace yet, but you’re looking forward to that. What are you really looking forward to?

Speaker 1 | 28:23.954

So I would say that the AI and ML, again, artificial intelligence and machine learning, I’m sick and tired of actually hearing those two words. I still have to see the actual use cases in the life science industry, which will actually add value and clear all the confusion and clutter which people have in their mind. That is one thing I would say. And the other thing is on the blockchain side of the house, that is equally confusing and not proven, at least in the life sciences side, which I really want to see. I believe in the tremendous value of the technology. But like I said, there isn’t much either I see or I see coming out of it, which I would love to, you know, see.

Speaker 0 | 29:28.891

How would you leverage AI?

Speaker 1 | 29:33.654

Yeah, that’s what I mean, right? So there are a lot of companies who are trying to actually… leverage artificial intelligence. If I have to give you an example in terms of our side of business, which is drug development. This really comes into picture when we are trying to actually create awareness of all the trials among HCP, which are healthcare professionals or the patients. You know, what we are seeing more and more is there are a lot of patients who never get the right information and there are models which are out there which can… which can increase the awareness of these trials. And those can come through the social chatter, which the data, the information is out there on the social media, but it never reaches the right person. In this example, the right person will be the sponsor like us, or the CRO who is actually trying to do the clinical trials. So So the part where AI has the capability to look into the unstructured data and then make head and tail out of it and then give it out to the right person is the part which I’m really exploring because what that can do is it can expedite the trials. With the expedition of trials, we get drugs in the market sooner and everybody or I would say the people who are living with these devastating diseases, they don’t have to do anymore.

Speaker 0 | 31:30.431

Oh, interesting. Switching gears here a little bit, let’s talk about leadership. What’s one leadership thing that you rely on?

Speaker 1 | 31:44.597

I rely on. So, I mean, at this point of my career, I rely on empathy because I feel like that empathy is really important and people will forget what you did for them, but they will never forget how you did it for them. So that is something which I pay very close attention to. How do you treat people and the how? It is a three-letter word. but it is a very powerful word. So I always, every day, kind of practice the how. And, you know, that is the thing which I lead with, empathy.

Speaker 0 | 32:33.756

So if you were mentoring a young geek coming out of programming, but moving up the chain, wants to learn some leadership things, would you… have that person start practicing empathy or there are some other things that you might have this person do for it to become a better leader i would say start with empathy uh and also leave room for uh you

Speaker 1 | 33:06.804

know mistakes because you know when you are trying to go up the chain and trying to actually be the leader you want to be It’s very easy to kind of get into a discipline of assuming things that, you know, why the hell this person is not doing things this way? Because there is no way, you know, everybody has a different way. And what I will actually educate a young me, you know, if I have to go back 10, 15 years, I would say, cut a little slack, be a little patient and try to learn. Try to learn the way you are being exposed to, you know, from your own people who you’re trying to manage because you never know, you might even learn a thing or two from their way. And on the same side, the other important part of leadership is the stakeholder alignment and the stakeholder alignment only comes when you’re trying, when you are able to actually make the relationships. And empathy goes a long way in also making those relationships with the stakeholders. That is where a lot of time should be spent. And then, you know, again, you know, there is a whole laundry list of things in my head, but I would stick to actually these two for now. And I will say that I try to practice that. There are so many things you can read about it. But if you keep these things in mind, then there is a better chance that you will be successful.

Speaker 0 | 34:53.828

Right on. Perfect. In five or 10 years, there’s going to be tech, or I don’t know what the timeframe is, but let’s think about a technology that we’re all currently using, some sort of it. It could be keyboards. It could be whatever, whatever you do using technology. What do you think that we- use commonly now that we’re not going to be using in the future?

Speaker 1 | 35:27.534

That’s a good question. I wish I would say the cars, you know.

Speaker 0 | 35:33.437

Oh, good. Okay.

Speaker 1 | 35:35.198

I would say the gas guzzling cars, you know, I just don’t see them being used 10 years from now and due to several reasons.

Speaker 0 | 35:47.523

Okay. Well, that makes sense. Anything else? Can you think of anything else that is going to be going away? I can see keyboards and mouse gone away. We’ve had them entirely too doggone long. And there’s a big gap. There’s a big time gap between my thought process down to the keyboard, onto the screen, and back up into my head. Too much time.

Speaker 1 | 36:19.708

Yeah, definitely. I think that is also there. But the only challenge is then the voice recognition and all that is definitely already there. But sometimes there is a limitation where people don’t want to actually talk or they are in a space where they can’t really talk that crisply. how many times you have seen people utilizing text messages just for the same reason, because they can’t be on the phone because maybe they have a kid crying in the background or they are in a setting where they are in a cafe or whatever. So there are certain things which comes to mind, you know, when I think about why, you know, the voice recognition hasn’t actually taken off.

Speaker 0 | 37:05.129

But the other recognition is already going to be surpassed. I mean, with Neuralink, you know, these links. I mean, that’s what I’d like to see happen more and more is the Neuralink success within tapping into our minds.

Speaker 1 | 37:21.946

Yeah, I would say, you know, again, now we are on this topic. So I will definitely add one thing, which is in my list of items, which is, you know, I don’t know about you, but I have like, you know, I have Apple Watch on my left and I have Fitbit on my right wrist. I have Siri on my phone and Alexa everywhere. If I say the word, they all will wake up. I feel like that, you know, this whole thing, you call it Alexa or Siri, it has to be kind of embedded in our freaking body because I want to see, like, how many times I would feel like that. You know, I have an Apple Watch on my wrist, but I can’t talk to Alexa on it because it’s Apple, it’s not Amazon. My whole house is all like… If we’re with AI, but it is all Alexa, but if I need to control, I really need to be close to that device to wake it up. But what I’m looking forward for is something like a chip which can be put in our body so that you don’t have to charge it. You don’t have to figure out if it is on you. You can just kind of invoke it from wherever and your device, which is your phone in your hand, can actually talk to it. So bridge the gap between. being proximity close to the device and trying to actually figure out how do you wake it up you know that is the basic thing which is not there yet and now again like amazon come up with the the ring which you can put on a finger which looks freaking ugly and big uh and it still has to be charged and it just it is just clunky so i would simply replace something like this with a little bit of a minor surgery uh and just just uh put it in put it in the place.

Speaker 0 | 39:10.437

There it is. Now you mentioned you got AI at home. What are you talking about? Are you talking about Alexa or do you have something a little bit more sophisticated you want to share with me?

Speaker 1 | 39:21.046

Yeah, I would say I have a whole slew of things, you know, I mean, starting with the garage doors, you know, and the car, you know.

Speaker 0 | 39:28.773

You have this already?

Speaker 1 | 39:31.155

Yes, exactly. So, you know, the whole house is kind of digitally automated in a way that I can control my car, which happens to be an electric car, so that’s easy to actually control through the app. I can summon it. I can open up the garages, all of the lights in the house. I can control through my voice or phone. Certainly anything which is hooked to the electrical ports like the lamps and all those small things, the TVs, all of these things are Alexa powered. And to an extent where one time my wife calls me up when I was up at a dinner with my friends and she’s asking me how the fuck I should turn off the light because I mind my friends. She couldn’t actually. figure out to turn the light off. So I’m pretty much kind of an AI person, but sometimes when you overdo it, you know, there are challenges.

Speaker 0 | 40:33.587

Well, I’m kind of confused on where the AI is in that. I mean, you’ve got, well, you sound like, are you a Linux guy?

Speaker 1 | 40:44.470

No.

Speaker 0 | 40:45.530

You’re not. Okay. I was curious. I was like, because I knew a guy, I worked next to a… I mean, I live next to a guy who is a Linux guy. He could program anything. And this was even like, gosh, almost 20 years ago. Yeah, it was 20 years ago. And he was using electricity, electricity outlets to send signals all around his house. And he was programming all the different things, just like it sounds like you were doing. You’re doing. But. I’m curious where the AI is. Where do you have this artificial intelligence? I was hoping you’d say, well, yeah, I got this program that watches my garage door. If it knows I’m not around, it’ll close it for me.

Speaker 1 | 41:31.328

You know what you mean. So those things are by default there where if my garage is left open, it actually texts me saying that your garage has been open for more than usual amount of time. Now the next stage I’m going to get to is where it automatically takes action and it closes it. Because how many times people have left their garages open just to kind of invite anything accidental happening, right? So yeah, so these are the things where, you know, sky is the limit and I want to see technology not just kind of giving you information. It is actually going to make, it’s actually going to take decision for you and act on it. But it’s a slippery slope and I understand it has to be managed and the jury is out in terms of when the robots are going to take over. But I believe in that fine, delicate balance. And that is where I think that is where we are heading next. I know Elon Musk is trying his best to take us to Mars. But I just want to live on Earth and try to utilize what we have here.

Speaker 0 | 42:44.568

Yeah. Well, we might have to move to Mars, huh? When all the AI and all the artificial intelligence and the machines take over. And because our climate can’t support us anymore, either we dig down and go underground or we go to Mars.

Speaker 1 | 43:01.640

Yeah, there you go. I mean,

Speaker 0 | 43:03.942

I don’t want to leave Earth.

Speaker 1 | 43:06.063

Yes. I’ll rather stay here in Boston.

Speaker 0 | 43:08.925

There you go. There you go. So. What else? What haven’t we talked about yet today, Praveen? What did you think I was going to ask you that I didn’t ask you yet?

Speaker 1 | 43:23.577

That’s a good question. Honestly, I think you outdid my expectation. I was expecting you giving me more than what I was expecting for Thursday afternoon.

Speaker 0 | 43:39.746

That’s fantastic. It is afternoon for you. We’re just heading into noon. Well, I’m in Denver. So, well, I’m just trying to think here. I can look through the comments here. Or not the comments, but the, yeah, you went to New Mexico State University. Now you’re in Boston. What happened there?

Speaker 1 | 44:00.222

There is a story there. You know, honestly, this was back in actually 99, 2000, coming out of dot com. boom, bubble, I would say, there wasn’t much of a job out there. Fortunately, the project I did in my master’s attracted some attention here in Boston. I got this call from somebody at that time who was trying to hire. After a couple of interviews, I was given this offer and he said, Can you start in Westford, Massachusetts next week? Can I start? Certainly. I have my car. I’ll be there. At that time, I had no idea it would take me just seven days to drive. That’s how ignorant I was. And that’s how I landed. Certainly, I didn’t drive. I flew to Boston. And then from there, I have moved to West Coast, Chicago and whatnot. And back in 2004, actually, me and my wife, we… we decided to settle in Boston. So since 2004, this is home. And now I feel like that I can’t even go anywhere because I’m spoiled, you know, with all the good schools and all the hospitals and all the four seasons, you know, minus the snow, which, you know, thanks to global warming, we don’t get that anymore. Not that much anymore. And, you know, we just love it here.

Speaker 0 | 45:49.525

Yeah. Well, for all the people that are out there on the West or East Coast, just, you know, you know, I’m from Denver. We still get 300 days of snow a year. So all you, you can all just believe what you want about Denver. So yeah, you don’t want to come here. I’m just, just kidding. We have 300 days of sun here. Hey, listen, I saw that you have a undergraduate in mechanical engineering. Is that right?

Speaker 1 | 46:21.415

Yes.

Speaker 0 | 46:22.876

I’m assuming you still kind of use your education as an engineer in daily things. Tell me about that. I have a degree in civil engineering.

Speaker 1 | 46:33.085

Yeah, so the way I use, in fact, in my professional life also, today, for example, TCR Square, we do manufacture drugs. So the word manufacture is… directly linked to actually manufacturing and that the mechanical engineering has really helped me understand the processes how the machine works now our machines are different it’s not really like the lathe machine and all that which back then we did our um you know schooling on but uh those are the things which uh you know keeps uh my skills kind of utilized from that perspective. And then, you know, certainly on a personal note, you know, I have been actually riding Harley-Davidson since actually 2008. So I do all of the work myself, you know. I still have to, you know, I don’t have the internal combustion cars. So unfortunately, I can’t… practice oil change and all those kind of things on my electric cars but the the motorcycles actually keep my juices flowing right right so let’s wrap up with one last thing here i’m gonna ask you um in

Speaker 0 | 47:58.138

your professional life or even personal if you want to go there you might be looking for certain type of talent you might be looking for there’s something that you need out there that you would like to throw out you into the audience? Is there anything that you’re looking for that you would like to get help with from somebody out there, out there in the world, out there listening to the podcast?

Speaker 1 | 48:23.529

Well, absolutely. I think we need a lot of help in terms of fast tracking our clinical trials, making sure that our drugs are reaching the right patient. So there is a huge need. for somebody who comes with the knowledge of systems, the digitalization of technology which can bridge the gap and bring those drugs faster. And the second thing is on the cybersecurity side, because our sector is heavily targeted right after it gets attention from COVID and all. There’s a lot of data, where data becomes uh cyber a major issue uh so apart from actually clinical trials the cyber security is the huge focus and uh those are the two uh skills and resources who are always in the all right

Speaker 0 | 49:27.868

well so there you have it audience um praveen needs some help in those areas so if you know anything or know anybody reach out uh the name of the company is tcr squared Praveen Mahotra. You can check him, find him on LinkedIn. And with that, Praveen, thank you very much for spending some time with us, sharing your insights and answering some questions. Really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 | 49:54.726

yeah same here scott um it was really nice talking to you and uh have a great rest of your week

171. Praveen Malhotra Tells Us Why Dealing With Vendors is a Huge Part of Life Sciences IT

Speaker 0 | 00:09.587

Hey everyone, Scott Smeester here with CIO Mastermind. You know who I am. Check out CIOmastermind.com if you need support, coaching, training, be more effective in your C-suite position. We’re here today talking to Praveen Mahot. Ultra. Did I say that? Did I say your last name right?

Speaker 1 | 00:33.765

That is perfect. I think you’re going to get better.

Speaker 0 | 00:38.006

I’m nailing it today, everyone. And he’s with a company called TCR Squared Therapeutics, Inc. Tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 1 | 00:47.529

Sure. So first of all, I’m super excited to be on the podcast today. And from our… Company perspective, again, we are TCR squared. The name itself comes from the fact that we are actually working on a T cell receptor, which is an antigen which takes care of a solid tumor if the direction is accurate in terms of how we use it. So we have two products in the clinic right now. The first one is in phase two. And that is actually targeting solid tumors, specifically in the mesothelin. And there are several other indications where we are trying to progress this particular drug. This is an autologous candidate. By autologous, I mean we take cancer cells out of cancer patients, inject it. back into the cancer patient before that we certainly are doing a lot of things to make sure that those cancer cells they go back and they fight uh the bad element uh cancer that is the one thing and then the second uh product which we also have in our first phase is uh is on the allogeneic uh allogeneic is off the shelf therapy where We are taking cells out of healthy donors and injecting into the cancer patient. So it’s a different type of therapy. But I just wanted to highlight that these are the two products which we have in the clinic. And we hope to bring these transformative therapies to the cancer patients as soon as possible. Because, you know…

Speaker 0 | 02:53.776

uh they are reading okay so you know as the head of technology in your company what what does the what form of technology does it is it that you support besides you know it within the company are there other things that are you like working in conjunction with like the doctor or the the researchers the people who you know, the chemist maybe perhaps, and trying to develop some type of a technology platform or some type of even maybe a device, because that could be technology or maybe not even device, but maybe a way to implement it. So tell me a little bit about some of the challenges that you have with that.

Speaker 1 | 03:41.498

Thanks for asking that question. Now, typically, you know, when we say IT, it’s very easy for somebody to kind of go into understanding ideas, alright, that’s like fixing the laptop, the emails, and all the basic things which come into mind. So as part of my role in TCR Squared, I’m actually fortunate to be the part, or I would say the owner of digital transformation. And that transformation kind of starts and ends with all of the departments within TCR squared. So I’ll give you an example. In terms of, you know, when you look at a drug development lifecycle, you know, we start with early research discovery. That’s where R&D department comes into focus. So our digital transformation or my role you know, starts at the onset of early research and discovery, where we are looking at translational science and all the tools and systems which these scientists, they are actually going to need to develop something which will eventually go into the clinic. And then from there, there are multiple departments which are involved when the drug is actually moving from early R&D into the clinic. When that happens, there is a clinical operations group. you know there is process and analytical group there is regulatory there is quality uh there is manufacturing and uh so on so forth so long story medium i would say that like that yeah in my medium okay we’ll come back to that but yeah yeah right because i i must say that the story is always you know not really that short which people think it is So to answer your question in a long way, my role kind of encompasses each and every department which is responsible for putting the drug in the arm of the patient, which includes, I would say, hundreds of platforms. I’m not talking about systems. Platform comprises of several systems. And there are hundreds of platforms in each and every vertical of drug discovery, the regulatory, the compliance, your clinical quality, manufacturing, and whatnot. So it’s like whole nine yards.

Speaker 0 | 06:41.650

Gotcha. Gotcha. So at the end of the day, the product obviously is a drug. You don’t necessarily directly affect that, but you do. within the whole company, all the different departments, as any good IT and head of technology would do.

Speaker 1 | 07:04.516

You got it. Because all of these departments, they need a digital system. If you think about clinical operations, you know, when we go out and do our clinical trials, we need actually patients. You know, before even we talk about patient enrollment, there has to be a way. for these clinical trials to be made aware to the hospitals, to the doctors, to the patients. So all of the things they require actually digital innovation or tool or a system in a very simplistic language to do their job. So that is where we come in in technology and we are looking at a wide variety of vendors or systems which are out there. And that is where the rubber is, I would say the crux is. Because there are so many vendors and there are so many systems which are out there which are giving you false promises. They are very well equipped with the buzzwords like AI and ML and machine learning and all that. But how do you cut through the noise and then… go get the right product, which is actually doing the things which, you know, it is saying it will do. How many times, you know, we have seen that we go into implementing or selecting something just to find out that it is not even doing 10% of whatever we saw in the slides.

Speaker 0 | 08:41.336

Got you, got you. You know, I would think that, so are you actually in the healthcare industry, or do you sell into the healthcare industry? Like you’re a drug manufacturer. Yes, that’s obviously healthcare. But I’m curious if you have the same technology and IT problems that the rest of healthcare does, which is in real bad shape.

Speaker 1 | 09:10.864

I would say, you know, so our sector is more or less kind of a… it’s not considered healthcare because of the fact that we come before that. We are life sciences, we are actually preparing, we are developing the drug. And after that, actually healthcare comes in where now you really have a patient who is going to benefit from either the drug we are actually producing or there is going to be a medical device company who will be actually providing those kind of raw material to the healthcare. So we are… we are on the other side of healthcare.

Speaker 0 | 09:53.900

Okay. Then maybe here’s how we can judge it. How would you say then within your industry, technology is holding up? Do you feel real confident where it is? Like if healthcare is at like a three or four on a scale of 10, where is life sciences? Where is TCR squared in their road to digital transformation?

Speaker 1 | 10:23.046

That’s a great question. So, um… I would say that we are pretty much embarking upon the journey for digital transformation, given the drug development stage we are in. Like I mentioned, we are a clinically staged company, but typically what I have seen is that when you get to the stage of commercialization, The drug development lifecycle is typically five to eight years these days. It takes that much time minimum to bring a drug out in the market. We are kind of, on that kind of a scale, we are about 30% into our drug development lifecycle. So what I am doing in my role is I’m trying to align the time it takes for the drug to get to the market so that by that time we are at least reaching a point where we can say that we are in a transformational mode. Because in technology, I kind of see there are three parts to get to actual digital transformation. The first one is where you are barely running, you are keeping the lights on. And then the second one is you’re trying to scale up and you are growing. And then the last but not the least is that’s where you are delivering business value and you are at the onset of digital transformation. So to kind of summarize our digital transformation, we are about 30% into it. So if I have to put a… percentage where we are and where we are going we are somewhere between uh you know run and grow and we need to be we need to be at a digital transformation by 2024 plus so

Speaker 0 | 12:35.080

that it can align with our drug development commercialization okay then specifically on that within the next two years Specifically, what has to happen in your mind?

Speaker 1 | 12:52.791

Yes. So a number of things have to happen. From our drug development lifecycle perspective, we continue to produce good data out of our clinical trial findings because we want to make sure that our clinical trials are giving us the expected results. With that comes financing capabilities, and with financing capabilities, all the investments in the right technology can be made. So my strategy, not just with TCR squared, but with any small biotech has been to kind of stage gate large investments. based upon the clinical trial outcomes because you certainly don’t want to be under investing or over investing in technology or digital transformation because it can come and bite you so so in my role uh i’m responsible to maintain that delicate balance so that we are not uh you know doing more or less we we in fact have to do a lot more with a lot less. And that is what the true state is for the smaller life science companies who do not make money yet, who are just in the process of commercialization and who are only utilizing funds from the money they have raised from a private investor or public investor. So in my role, it’s very critical to demonstrate the right timing of… the investment. We all know that we have to make the investment, but most important part is the when, right? And that is where most of… uh my time is spent and that is where i feel like that a lot of cios uh need to be educated about uh how do you how do you maintain the balance how do you maintain the what the balance okay got you i

Speaker 0 | 15:12.592

was you know tcr squared uh looks like it was founded in 2015 so what seven years ago uh You’re talking digital transformation, and the question that comes to my mind is, if you were founded in 2015, what kind of digital transformation has to happen? I mean, there’s not a whole lot of history of, well, tech debt and bad decisions being made over the years of technology. So transformation to me makes it sound like my idea of transformation is taking tech debt, all these old… legacy applications, bringing them up to speed, starting to cruise to the cloud, go to the cloud, that kind of stuff. But with such a young company, you would assume that maybe that’s already happened. But help me, walk me through a little bit about what digital transformation means to you in such a young company.

Speaker 1 | 16:14.885

Good question. So I would say that even though we are a seven-year-old company, There are a lot of things which could go wrong in that seven year period. If the right people are not in the right role, one of the problems, again, like I said, this is not the first company with the similar kind of a setting I have worked for. Everywhere I go, I see the same thing. If the company is four year old or seven year old. They are still making a lot of investments which are, I call it, unscalable, unreliable, and untimely. You know, if I have to break it down for you, we have plenty of applications which are unscalable because they were only put in mind thinking that we’re going to be still a 50-people company. But guess what? We’re already 200. They’re looking at growing to 300, 400. So many systems which are put in mind, thinking from that strategy, are actually already unscalable. I call them unreliable too because just because they can’t be scalable now, they are quickly becoming unreliable. So the digital transformation strategy starts with the assessment of those bad decisions which have been made. so that you can quickly pivot into talking about making them scalable and more reliable, which means they’re going to take them out, put the new systems, which are going to be looked upon as next 10 years kind of investment from scalability. So those examples are everywhere. If I see in the GNA and by GNA, I mean A GNA is typically a group of your finance, your HR, your legal, your IT, all of those departments. And then on the other side, you have R&D, you have clinical quality, and all of those functions. So digital transformation for us starts with the detailed assessment of what has already been put in. And then from there, we try to align our drug development lifecycle. For example, right now, we are heavily focused on clinical trials, because our immediate focus is to make sure our clinical trials are successful. So part of digital transformation is now paying more attention on expediting those clinical trials. And for that, there are wide variety of systems which are going to be required and that’s where the you know i would say those are the technologies which are competitive differentiators for companies because um you know last time i checked in cambridge there were like 2000 small biotechs so why would tcr be more successful you know tcr would be more successful if we are embarking on the digital innovation And we are utilizing those AI and ML, all the noise apart, right? We just have to cut through the noise and really, really look at the use case. you know what do we mean by ai related technology and go uh implement those technologies into our drug development life cycle so that we can get in a com you know comparative advantage so those are those are the things which goes on in evaluating uh where we are today and where we are going in the next actually two to five years and that that is the that is the thing which we you know, which we try to prioritize and we call it, you know, a transformative stage in like four or five years.

Speaker 0 | 20:32.017

Okay. So you’ve been with TCR Squared for about a year. Is that correct?

Speaker 1 | 20:38.002

Yep.

Speaker 0 | 20:38.843

And I noticed that you’re in Boston. Your company is in Cambridge. Is your company on site?

Speaker 1 | 20:49.192

Oh, yes. Correct. So, um… We have three locations in Cambridge and all of those three locations, there are labs and there are scientists and we have pretty much a hybrid culture where if you are in a lab, you’re definitely expected to be there in the lab. And then if you are in IT, there is a flexibility depending upon if you can still deliver.

Speaker 0 | 21:16.972

Okay, gotcha. And what is that flexibility? A couple of days a week you can work out of the home or something like that?

Speaker 1 | 21:23.115

Yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 0 | 21:24.535

Okay. Okay, interesting. Thank you for sharing that. I’m just kind of gauging what’s happening in the industry. Do most of your employees, though, they must work out of Boston area or out of Cambridge?

Speaker 1 | 21:40.840

Not really, to be honest. COVID has actually given a different… perspective to people. And the last, what actually we are, I must start saying three years now because it’s more than two years. You know, we have seen that at least on the technology side and what my function does, you know, we have actually, we have been able to deliver more because of just the Zoom world we are in and the amount of time we are able to save on the commute. Honestly, COVID has taught us a great lesson that there are a few things which are definitely going to add value if you are doing remotely. But I don’t want to underscore that there is still a lot of benefit for in-person interactions and making relationships and that’s where Zoom is. Zoom has made things very, how should I say, you know, it has to be very organized and very planned, you know, if even you’re trying to get hold of somebody. So there is no opportunity for the hallway discussions or a coffee kind of, or even, you know, those lunches and dinners where you actually make those, where you actually forge the relationships. So that is a part which is a downside. But again, we have to create that balance. And with a couple of days on site and all of those kind of things, we can take best of both worlds.

Speaker 0 | 23:26.649

Okay, that sounds good. I was looking through your bio or whatever, kind of your work history, and all I see right now is leadership roles. Where were you when you were learning technology? Where were you or what did you do when you were getting your hands dirty?

Speaker 1 | 23:51.880

Good question. So I started in the high-tech sector where on the technology side of the house, right after actually doing my master’s in computer science. It was an obvious choice for me to work for a bigger multi-billion dollar company like Oracle and Motorola. That’s where I went in and that’s where I learned the technology side of the house. I’m still pretty hands-on when it comes to certain things like the ERPs of the world. the enterprise resource planning, the analytics and data. Those are the things and the SaaS and cloud which we have today. I’ve been fortunate to be part of the early revolution of cloud. by engaging directly with the companies I just mentioned. So that’s what my first decade of career actually looks like. And from there, you know, I kind of went into the life sciences sector because of my passion about, you know, treating patients with these kind of diseases. So in the last decade or so, I’ve been actually… heading the IT or digital transformation for these life science companies.

Speaker 0 | 25:29.188

Okay, gotcha. So if all goes well for you personally in the next 10 years, what needs to happen?

Speaker 1 | 25:41.097

You mean for my career?

Speaker 0 | 25:42.978

Yeah. Where are you heading? Looks like you’re heading towards like a CTO or CIO role.

Speaker 1 | 25:51.912

Yeah, so I would say that I really want to see the paradigm shift in making IT look like more than just IT. And I call it like a digital innovator or the data evangelist. So definitely that’s where I’m heading, where I’m excited to actually look for the next five or ten years where I can actually just continue to shape my skills and learn more on these cutting-edge technologies, which can then differentiate either smaller or bigger biotechs or high-tech companies to deliver. more value to patients or customers. So that’s where I’m just kind of heading in a direction where I keep on actually learning, I keep on actually adding value, and I keep on demonstrating that value to the C-suite or the board. I don’t know about the titles and all,

Speaker 0 | 27:09.417

but Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 | 27:11.219

that it’s a It’s the place where I want to be, where I want to be in a place where I’m constantly learning and educating and adding value. And the last but not the least is that I owe it to the community to provide mentorship to people who were in my shoes like 10 years from now or whatever. So that’s the most important thing or a passion which I have to keep on contributing to the society. and the people so that they can also grow their career.

Speaker 0 | 27:46.593

All right. So Praveen, looking on the horizon, whenever that might be, what innovation in technology, what concept in technology, what methodology, whatever you want to choose, can’t get here fast enough for can’t be offered on the marketplace yet, but you’re looking forward to that. What are you really looking forward to?

Speaker 1 | 28:23.954

So I would say that the AI and ML, again, artificial intelligence and machine learning, I’m sick and tired of actually hearing those two words. I still have to see the actual use cases in the life science industry, which will actually add value and clear all the confusion and clutter which people have in their mind. That is one thing I would say. And the other thing is on the blockchain side of the house, that is equally confusing and not proven, at least in the life sciences side, which I really want to see. I believe in the tremendous value of the technology. But like I said, there isn’t much either I see or I see coming out of it, which I would love to, you know, see.

Speaker 0 | 29:28.891

How would you leverage AI?

Speaker 1 | 29:33.654

Yeah, that’s what I mean, right? So there are a lot of companies who are trying to actually… leverage artificial intelligence. If I have to give you an example in terms of our side of business, which is drug development. This really comes into picture when we are trying to actually create awareness of all the trials among HCP, which are healthcare professionals or the patients. You know, what we are seeing more and more is there are a lot of patients who never get the right information and there are models which are out there which can… which can increase the awareness of these trials. And those can come through the social chatter, which the data, the information is out there on the social media, but it never reaches the right person. In this example, the right person will be the sponsor like us, or the CRO who is actually trying to do the clinical trials. So So the part where AI has the capability to look into the unstructured data and then make head and tail out of it and then give it out to the right person is the part which I’m really exploring because what that can do is it can expedite the trials. With the expedition of trials, we get drugs in the market sooner and everybody or I would say the people who are living with these devastating diseases, they don’t have to do anymore.

Speaker 0 | 31:30.431

Oh, interesting. Switching gears here a little bit, let’s talk about leadership. What’s one leadership thing that you rely on?

Speaker 1 | 31:44.597

I rely on. So, I mean, at this point of my career, I rely on empathy because I feel like that empathy is really important and people will forget what you did for them, but they will never forget how you did it for them. So that is something which I pay very close attention to. How do you treat people and the how? It is a three-letter word. but it is a very powerful word. So I always, every day, kind of practice the how. And, you know, that is the thing which I lead with, empathy.

Speaker 0 | 32:33.756

So if you were mentoring a young geek coming out of programming, but moving up the chain, wants to learn some leadership things, would you… have that person start practicing empathy or there are some other things that you might have this person do for it to become a better leader i would say start with empathy uh and also leave room for uh you

Speaker 1 | 33:06.804

know mistakes because you know when you are trying to go up the chain and trying to actually be the leader you want to be It’s very easy to kind of get into a discipline of assuming things that, you know, why the hell this person is not doing things this way? Because there is no way, you know, everybody has a different way. And what I will actually educate a young me, you know, if I have to go back 10, 15 years, I would say, cut a little slack, be a little patient and try to learn. Try to learn the way you are being exposed to, you know, from your own people who you’re trying to manage because you never know, you might even learn a thing or two from their way. And on the same side, the other important part of leadership is the stakeholder alignment and the stakeholder alignment only comes when you’re trying, when you are able to actually make the relationships. And empathy goes a long way in also making those relationships with the stakeholders. That is where a lot of time should be spent. And then, you know, again, you know, there is a whole laundry list of things in my head, but I would stick to actually these two for now. And I will say that I try to practice that. There are so many things you can read about it. But if you keep these things in mind, then there is a better chance that you will be successful.

Speaker 0 | 34:53.828

Right on. Perfect. In five or 10 years, there’s going to be tech, or I don’t know what the timeframe is, but let’s think about a technology that we’re all currently using, some sort of it. It could be keyboards. It could be whatever, whatever you do using technology. What do you think that we- use commonly now that we’re not going to be using in the future?

Speaker 1 | 35:27.534

That’s a good question. I wish I would say the cars, you know.

Speaker 0 | 35:33.437

Oh, good. Okay.

Speaker 1 | 35:35.198

I would say the gas guzzling cars, you know, I just don’t see them being used 10 years from now and due to several reasons.

Speaker 0 | 35:47.523

Okay. Well, that makes sense. Anything else? Can you think of anything else that is going to be going away? I can see keyboards and mouse gone away. We’ve had them entirely too doggone long. And there’s a big gap. There’s a big time gap between my thought process down to the keyboard, onto the screen, and back up into my head. Too much time.

Speaker 1 | 36:19.708

Yeah, definitely. I think that is also there. But the only challenge is then the voice recognition and all that is definitely already there. But sometimes there is a limitation where people don’t want to actually talk or they are in a space where they can’t really talk that crisply. how many times you have seen people utilizing text messages just for the same reason, because they can’t be on the phone because maybe they have a kid crying in the background or they are in a setting where they are in a cafe or whatever. So there are certain things which comes to mind, you know, when I think about why, you know, the voice recognition hasn’t actually taken off.

Speaker 0 | 37:05.129

But the other recognition is already going to be surpassed. I mean, with Neuralink, you know, these links. I mean, that’s what I’d like to see happen more and more is the Neuralink success within tapping into our minds.

Speaker 1 | 37:21.946

Yeah, I would say, you know, again, now we are on this topic. So I will definitely add one thing, which is in my list of items, which is, you know, I don’t know about you, but I have like, you know, I have Apple Watch on my left and I have Fitbit on my right wrist. I have Siri on my phone and Alexa everywhere. If I say the word, they all will wake up. I feel like that, you know, this whole thing, you call it Alexa or Siri, it has to be kind of embedded in our freaking body because I want to see, like, how many times I would feel like that. You know, I have an Apple Watch on my wrist, but I can’t talk to Alexa on it because it’s Apple, it’s not Amazon. My whole house is all like… If we’re with AI, but it is all Alexa, but if I need to control, I really need to be close to that device to wake it up. But what I’m looking forward for is something like a chip which can be put in our body so that you don’t have to charge it. You don’t have to figure out if it is on you. You can just kind of invoke it from wherever and your device, which is your phone in your hand, can actually talk to it. So bridge the gap between. being proximity close to the device and trying to actually figure out how do you wake it up you know that is the basic thing which is not there yet and now again like amazon come up with the the ring which you can put on a finger which looks freaking ugly and big uh and it still has to be charged and it just it is just clunky so i would simply replace something like this with a little bit of a minor surgery uh and just just uh put it in put it in the place.

Speaker 0 | 39:10.437

There it is. Now you mentioned you got AI at home. What are you talking about? Are you talking about Alexa or do you have something a little bit more sophisticated you want to share with me?

Speaker 1 | 39:21.046

Yeah, I would say I have a whole slew of things, you know, I mean, starting with the garage doors, you know, and the car, you know.

Speaker 0 | 39:28.773

You have this already?

Speaker 1 | 39:31.155

Yes, exactly. So, you know, the whole house is kind of digitally automated in a way that I can control my car, which happens to be an electric car, so that’s easy to actually control through the app. I can summon it. I can open up the garages, all of the lights in the house. I can control through my voice or phone. Certainly anything which is hooked to the electrical ports like the lamps and all those small things, the TVs, all of these things are Alexa powered. And to an extent where one time my wife calls me up when I was up at a dinner with my friends and she’s asking me how the fuck I should turn off the light because I mind my friends. She couldn’t actually. figure out to turn the light off. So I’m pretty much kind of an AI person, but sometimes when you overdo it, you know, there are challenges.

Speaker 0 | 40:33.587

Well, I’m kind of confused on where the AI is in that. I mean, you’ve got, well, you sound like, are you a Linux guy?

Speaker 1 | 40:44.470

No.

Speaker 0 | 40:45.530

You’re not. Okay. I was curious. I was like, because I knew a guy, I worked next to a… I mean, I live next to a guy who is a Linux guy. He could program anything. And this was even like, gosh, almost 20 years ago. Yeah, it was 20 years ago. And he was using electricity, electricity outlets to send signals all around his house. And he was programming all the different things, just like it sounds like you were doing. You’re doing. But. I’m curious where the AI is. Where do you have this artificial intelligence? I was hoping you’d say, well, yeah, I got this program that watches my garage door. If it knows I’m not around, it’ll close it for me.

Speaker 1 | 41:31.328

You know what you mean. So those things are by default there where if my garage is left open, it actually texts me saying that your garage has been open for more than usual amount of time. Now the next stage I’m going to get to is where it automatically takes action and it closes it. Because how many times people have left their garages open just to kind of invite anything accidental happening, right? So yeah, so these are the things where, you know, sky is the limit and I want to see technology not just kind of giving you information. It is actually going to make, it’s actually going to take decision for you and act on it. But it’s a slippery slope and I understand it has to be managed and the jury is out in terms of when the robots are going to take over. But I believe in that fine, delicate balance. And that is where I think that is where we are heading next. I know Elon Musk is trying his best to take us to Mars. But I just want to live on Earth and try to utilize what we have here.

Speaker 0 | 42:44.568

Yeah. Well, we might have to move to Mars, huh? When all the AI and all the artificial intelligence and the machines take over. And because our climate can’t support us anymore, either we dig down and go underground or we go to Mars.

Speaker 1 | 43:01.640

Yeah, there you go. I mean,

Speaker 0 | 43:03.942

I don’t want to leave Earth.

Speaker 1 | 43:06.063

Yes. I’ll rather stay here in Boston.

Speaker 0 | 43:08.925

There you go. There you go. So. What else? What haven’t we talked about yet today, Praveen? What did you think I was going to ask you that I didn’t ask you yet?

Speaker 1 | 43:23.577

That’s a good question. Honestly, I think you outdid my expectation. I was expecting you giving me more than what I was expecting for Thursday afternoon.

Speaker 0 | 43:39.746

That’s fantastic. It is afternoon for you. We’re just heading into noon. Well, I’m in Denver. So, well, I’m just trying to think here. I can look through the comments here. Or not the comments, but the, yeah, you went to New Mexico State University. Now you’re in Boston. What happened there?

Speaker 1 | 44:00.222

There is a story there. You know, honestly, this was back in actually 99, 2000, coming out of dot com. boom, bubble, I would say, there wasn’t much of a job out there. Fortunately, the project I did in my master’s attracted some attention here in Boston. I got this call from somebody at that time who was trying to hire. After a couple of interviews, I was given this offer and he said, Can you start in Westford, Massachusetts next week? Can I start? Certainly. I have my car. I’ll be there. At that time, I had no idea it would take me just seven days to drive. That’s how ignorant I was. And that’s how I landed. Certainly, I didn’t drive. I flew to Boston. And then from there, I have moved to West Coast, Chicago and whatnot. And back in 2004, actually, me and my wife, we… we decided to settle in Boston. So since 2004, this is home. And now I feel like that I can’t even go anywhere because I’m spoiled, you know, with all the good schools and all the hospitals and all the four seasons, you know, minus the snow, which, you know, thanks to global warming, we don’t get that anymore. Not that much anymore. And, you know, we just love it here.

Speaker 0 | 45:49.525

Yeah. Well, for all the people that are out there on the West or East Coast, just, you know, you know, I’m from Denver. We still get 300 days of snow a year. So all you, you can all just believe what you want about Denver. So yeah, you don’t want to come here. I’m just, just kidding. We have 300 days of sun here. Hey, listen, I saw that you have a undergraduate in mechanical engineering. Is that right?

Speaker 1 | 46:21.415

Yes.

Speaker 0 | 46:22.876

I’m assuming you still kind of use your education as an engineer in daily things. Tell me about that. I have a degree in civil engineering.

Speaker 1 | 46:33.085

Yeah, so the way I use, in fact, in my professional life also, today, for example, TCR Square, we do manufacture drugs. So the word manufacture is… directly linked to actually manufacturing and that the mechanical engineering has really helped me understand the processes how the machine works now our machines are different it’s not really like the lathe machine and all that which back then we did our um you know schooling on but uh those are the things which uh you know keeps uh my skills kind of utilized from that perspective. And then, you know, certainly on a personal note, you know, I have been actually riding Harley-Davidson since actually 2008. So I do all of the work myself, you know. I still have to, you know, I don’t have the internal combustion cars. So unfortunately, I can’t… practice oil change and all those kind of things on my electric cars but the the motorcycles actually keep my juices flowing right right so let’s wrap up with one last thing here i’m gonna ask you um in

Speaker 0 | 47:58.138

your professional life or even personal if you want to go there you might be looking for certain type of talent you might be looking for there’s something that you need out there that you would like to throw out you into the audience? Is there anything that you’re looking for that you would like to get help with from somebody out there, out there in the world, out there listening to the podcast?

Speaker 1 | 48:23.529

Well, absolutely. I think we need a lot of help in terms of fast tracking our clinical trials, making sure that our drugs are reaching the right patient. So there is a huge need. for somebody who comes with the knowledge of systems, the digitalization of technology which can bridge the gap and bring those drugs faster. And the second thing is on the cybersecurity side, because our sector is heavily targeted right after it gets attention from COVID and all. There’s a lot of data, where data becomes uh cyber a major issue uh so apart from actually clinical trials the cyber security is the huge focus and uh those are the two uh skills and resources who are always in the all right

Speaker 0 | 49:27.868

well so there you have it audience um praveen needs some help in those areas so if you know anything or know anybody reach out uh the name of the company is tcr squared Praveen Mahotra. You can check him, find him on LinkedIn. And with that, Praveen, thank you very much for spending some time with us, sharing your insights and answering some questions. Really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 | 49:54.726

yeah same here scott um it was really nice talking to you and uh have a great rest of your week

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