The healthcare sector has been under the pump due to the COVID-19 pandemic for the past few months. However, industries such as the diagnostics industry are gaining ground amid the unprecedented situation. Diagnostics determine 70% of the medical decisions such as therapy, hospital admission, and hospital discharge and it is only 3% of the healthcare costs. Consequently, in the pandemic diagnostic testing has become one of the most important weapons in the fight against the pandemic.
Presently, the importance of accurate and precise diagnostics has been signified. Being one of the top 3 manufacturers of quality clinical chemistry Reagents and Urinalysis Test Strips with over 35 years of expertise in the diagnostics industry, Accurex Biomedical is complementing this need. Established in 1984, the Mumbai-based company is an Indian manufacturer and marketer which provides accurate and quality solutions in the diagnostics industry. Since its inception, the company has built a reputation of quality products, a strong financial base, and dynamic marketing.
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Guided by a clear vision and driven by innovation, Accurex has gained considerable expertise in manufacturing and marketing of In-vitro diagnostic reagents.
Multi-faceted Services and Solutions
Accurex provides a plethora of innovative and trustworthy medical diagnostic solutions. In the laboratory diagnostics space, Accurex offers the entire range of clinical chemistry and haematology reagents. In instruments, it offers semi-automated, fully automated clinical chemistry, and 3 part & 5 part haematology analyzers. The company also offers urinalysis test strips, urinalysis meters, and immunology rapid tests.
Besides these, Accurex offers blood glucose meters, haemoglobin meters, HbAlc meters, immunofluorescence meters, uric acid meters, and respective test strips in the Point of Care (POC) segment. Moreover, it has recently launched hand sanitizers, face masks, face shields, infrared thermometers, viral transport medium, and COVID-19 rapid antibody tests to fight against the pandemic and fill the void caused by a drop in sales of its routine products.
An Ambitious Second Generation Entrepreneur
The company operations are spearheaded by Abhinav Thakur, Managing Director at Accurex Biomedical. He graduated from the world-renowned University of California-Davis before completing his PGDM at NMIMS University, Mumbai. When he was studying in the USA, unfortunately, his father passed away untimely at a young age of 49, that led him to join the family business.
Since his appointment as the Managing Director, the company has grown 4.2 times in revenue and the size of the team also increased from 90 to 170 individuals. Over the past decade, Accurex has grown from a diagnostic reagent company to a diagnostics reagents and instruments company. As the CEO of Accurex, he is responsible for creating and implementing the mission, vision, and values of the company. Moreover, he sets and executes the growth strategies of the company.
“It is very important to grow an organization to satisfy the aspirations of all the stakeholders. Growth is like what oxygen is for life. Growth is important to sustain an organization,” he adds. Furthermore, human resources are one of the biggest assets of any company. Abhinav ensures to provide a suitable environment for the human resources in the company to perform at their best capabilities particularly in these unprecedented times.
The Culture of Empowerment
The culture of a company plays an important role for a company to thrive in these tricky times. Accurex Biomedical is a functional organization, viz. each function is led by the functional head that reports to the CEO. Moreover, the company follows a culture of empowerment. Whenever a decision has to be taken, the team is involved in it. “When you involve the team in decision making, it leads to ownership and empowerment. We have involved our team in taking tough decisions during the pandemic,” said Abhinav. Since the team was involved in the decision-making process, they took ownership in tough decisions and this kept them motivated through the crisis.
Adapting to the New Normal
“As an organization, we need to be agile to adapt to the changes happening in the external environment. As we have seen in millions of years of evolution that it’s the species that adapt survives the longest and the species that don’t adapt go extinct,” asserts Abhinav. He believes that businesses that innovate and adapt to the changes caused by the pandemic will survive and some may even prosper.
For instance, due to the pandemic, Accurex has converted most of its fixed costs into variable costs since the top-line forecast was uncertain. This helped the company maintain the cash flow to sustain its operations. Consequently, by changing its business model to cater to the needs caused by the pandemic, Accurex plans to sustain and overcome the challenges caused by the pandemic.
POC Testing: Bringing Convenience to the Patients
In 2020, Accurex has aimed to reach the revenue figure of 50 crores and strives to continue to grow in the near future as well. Talking about the future of diagnostics, Abhinav believes that Point-of-Care Testing (POCT) is one of the rapidly evolving laboratory-medical disciplines. POCT is also known as bedside testing.
Moreover, it contrasts with the historical pattern in which testing was wholly or mostly confined to the medical laboratory, which entailed sending off specimens away from the point of care and then waiting hours and days to get the result, during which time care must continue without the desired information. This problem was solved by the POC testing as through POC testing, the lab tests are available to the doctors and patients at home, bringing convenience especially to the patients.
As POC testing is gaining ground in the diagnostic industry, Accurex has launched a complete range of POC products to ensure faster and convenient testing.
