Cooper Surgical Fertility solutions is the global leader in IVF and reproductive genetics, providing innovative products and services for every step in the ART journey. The company has its presence in 24 countries across the globe where they provide a complete solution of IVF media, equipment, micro-tools, and genetic testing that are utilized in fertility clinics worldwide. Dr. Shipra Thukral is the Marketing Director at Cooper Surgical, and in her conversation with Women Entrepreneur India, highlights how the company is building on the high-quality reputation of its legacy companies. The legacy companies, including ORIGIO®, SAGE, Humagen, The Pipette Company (TPC), K-Systems, Research Instruments (RI), Wallace®, LifeGlobal® and Cooper GenomicsSM. Cooper Surgical provides a trusted ecosystem of consumables, equipment, technologies, and genetic testing for the complete ART process.

Here is the excerpt from the conversation of Women Entrepreneur India with Dr. Shipra Thukral.

Give Us A Brief Overview Of Cooper Surgical. What Are Your Roles And Responsibilities At The Company?

Cooper Surgical along with Cooper Vision are a part of the Cooper Companies. Cooper Vision is a global leader in the contact lens industry, dedicated to helping improve the way people see each day and continues to build upon the most complete portfolio of contact lens products available and Cooper Surgical have a diversified portfolio of products and services focusing on women’s health, fertility, and reproductive genomics.

At Cooper Surgical we manufacture & market products that are used primarily by obstetricians, gynecologists, and embryologists and it has two verticals – Cooper Surgical Fertility Solutions & the Medical device division.

 The vision of Cooper Surgical is to create a world of healthy women, babies, and families with our innovative products & services. With a global focus on customer centric approach, we constantly aim to improvise the standard of care by providing our customers with optimal products, service, and training.

In India our corporate office is in Mumbai along with our Center of excellence where we offer a wide range of courses and workshops for embryologists, gynecologists, lab managers and R&D scientists at every level of experience, with hands-on expert training in breakthrough technologies and next-generation techniques.

Beyond lectures, seminars, research and workshops, our team of experienced embryologists also assist with turn-key projects, laboratory design and clinic assessment to help optimize lab performance. We are also the knowledge partners in the development of the historical ART consensus guidelines involving the three major infertility societies of India - ISAR, ACE & IFS.

I, primarily, handle both the core and clinical marketing of Cooper Surgical responsible for overseeing the marketing, pricing and launch strategies for the complete product portfolio of fertility solutions with a team of product managers and embryologists. As part of Clinical marketing, my team is involved in reaching out to embryologists and organizing training programs, demos and workshops at our Centre of Excellence in Mumbai and collaboration with various societies and associations as knowledge partners. I also take care of the export segment of Cooper Surgical India as an additional responsibility to develop and increase our presence in the neighboring south Asian countries. In day-to-day functions, I am responsible for developing marketing strategy, brand building, KOL networking and working with regulatory consultants to ensure smooth business.

Take Us Through Your Educational And Career Journey. What Drew You To The Field Of Marketing?

I did my bachelor's in Science from Delhi University, followed by a master's from PGIMER, Chandigarh. Post that, I have completed my PhD in immunology from the National Institute of Immunology. I have worked with various medical device companies in life sciences and clinical diagnostics including Beckman Coulter and BD in different roles prior to joining Cooper Surgical. When I completed my PhD, I felt a strong need & desire for a shift in my career from academia to marketing and joined the corporate segment. With my first stint in Beckman Coulter, I was pretty clear this is what I would like to pursue as a career and started working towards enhancing my skills to becoming a stronger marketer and management from IIM Lucknow was one of the major steps in this journey.

What Are The Most Pressing Challenges That You Face As A Marketing Director, And How Do You Tackle Them?

I think what is important is how you engage with people in your team and ensure that they are in line with the strategy that you are building for the company. The team should be well aligned and have a buy in with the strategy, they should be part of it and then the execution happens on.

"Everything around us is changing very fast and your agility, your ability to learn and unlearn, will help you adapt to the change and grow"

an autopilot mode. Keeping the customer in the centre and aligning overall company strategy in an inclusive manner with all stakeholders from sales to service, finance and logistics to drive commercial and product excellence is the key.

What Are The Key Business Lessons That You Have Learned In Your Career, That You Will Like To Share With Young Women Of India Who Aspire To Become Business Leaders And Entrepreneurs?

If you want to excel at what you are doing in your domain, the most important thing you need to understand is where you are, the field you are playing in, market trends and competition, regulations etc and what you can do to stand out different and drive growth and build strong sustainable brands and customer loyalty. Based on that you need to position yourself and see how you can become more efficient, agile and strong at what you are doing. The key quality one needs to have is to be able to adapt to the changing times.

What has kept me going in my career, in whatever organization I have worked is, irrespective of any barriers or highs and lows, to focus on what difference I can bring to the organizations in a positive way and gain the trust of both the internal and external customers to drive the marketing strategy . I have had successes and failures, but the important thing is to learn from the failures. You need to trust yourself, persevere and keep going even in difficult times.

And lastly, you need to have a plan for everything that you want to do, and how you are going to do it. You trust yourself, execute the plan with everything that you know and learn what you don’t.

Shipra Thukral, Marketing Director, Cooper Surgical

Shipra has a PhD in Immunology, but her heart lies in marketing. She did an Executive Advanced Management Program in Marketing from IIM, Lucknow during her initial days in CooperSurgical when she joined as a Head of marketing at CooperSurgical, India. After three and half years of demonstrating leadership in business, she was promoted to Marketing Director of the company.