Just Five Questions: Urvashi Bhatnagar ’18

Urvashi Bhatnagar ’18 is Vice President of Business Development at Genpact and the co-author of The Sustainability Scorecard: How to Implement and Profit from Unexpected Solutions. She is an active venture advisor across the startup ecosystem, an Expert Advisor at Primary Venture Partners,  an opinion columnist for CEO World, a member of CHIEF and the Washington, DC Yale SOM Alumni Chapter Leader. She is “mom” to Victor (two and a half) and Arya Vyas (three months old), who will hopefully think she is super-cool one day.

What’s a global trend you are following where you see an opportunity or bright spot in this challenging macro environment?

I’ve been focused on mitigating the healthcare impact of climate change for many years and I see both bright spots and gaps where more needs to be done.

The good news is over the last two to three years, there is accelerating momentum in both the investment community and the scientific community focused on “benign by design,” a term created by my co-author Paul Anastas which captures the shift to designing and creating products that are inherently sustainable, such that when you are done using them they don’t harm anyone or anything. This movement has accelerated quickly and is crucial to mitigating healthcare risks for individuals and the planet. At this stage, there are a wide range of scientific innovations that are sustainable, benign by design, commercially viable and have business models that will allow them to scale profitably. These discoveries and breakthroughs are particularly promising in chemical manufacturing, energy production, transportation and mobility.

These innovations matter for two reasons.

First, they matter for healthcare reasons. Whether climate change is the number one dinner table conversation or not, personal health and wellness is a unifying conversation that affects everyone personally and at the macro level. Awareness of innovations that solve health and environmental challenges is important because it helps people understand their personal health and wellness is far more dependent on their lived environment and the economy of their area than their actions. The more people are educated on the opportunity for sustainable solutions, the faster the business case and business models will evolve that drive the change at scale.
The voice of the consumer has never been louder and today’s consumers are not willing to consume or support products that are toxic to their reproductive system or overall health. Organizations are realizing that and are transforming themselves to create products that are either less harmful or completely benign. This is key to progress.

While there are gaps in the market, there are a range of market leading firms who have decided that they want to be relevant to the consumer for the next 50 to 100 years. They know who they are now, who they're going to be and have a strategy to get there. They are transforming themselves to create products that will make them relevant, and this creates awareness of the gaps in knowledge we need to innovate around to achieve complete sustainability.

For example, we don’t have a good collection mechanism when electronics go into landfills; they degrade and release toxic chemicals in our groundwater. As awareness has increased around the impact of eWaste footprints, new models for solving eWaste have become a major focus for enterprises large and small. We find true competitors actually collaborating on this and working together with universities to come up with solutions that will drive scalable progress. Because of this collaboration, we will solve it faster and all participants will split the pie.

Second, innovation impacts the way capital is allocated in this world.

Today, there is a lack of informed investors focused on scientific breakthroughs and areas outside digital and AI-driven solutions and it’s systemic. It’s easier to understand technologies like software, AI and computer science—they’re viewed as high volume, high margin business models. Hardware, mechanical and chemical engineering and hard sciences like biology, physics and chemistry are much harder to understand especially for traditional capital allocators whether that be VCs, private equity or corporate investors. In addition, they tend to have longer development cycles. There’s an inherent allocation of capital around things we understand; when we understand scientific breakthroughs better, capital will follow. When you have investors who are more comfortable doing their due diligence evaluating software and algorithms rather than investing in sustainable fertilizer or battery cells that don’t use toxic materials then there is a hesitancy for capital allocation, systemically. This translates to slower growth, time to scale and lower graduation rates from one funding round to the next in some industries over others.

For example, think of the glitter bomb that is silicon. Yes it’s a versatile material and therefore it’s a mainstream element of so many health and beauty products. While it doesn’t kill you immediately, it is like wearing makeup that looks good today but kills you slowly and its impact on the environment is significant. We need to have an informed and educated class of institutional investors with a lot of capital that have the expertise and knowledge to due diligence scientific breakthroughs that are game changers, commercially viable, scalable and sustainable. Similarly, while microplastics and endocrine disrupting chemicals are found nearly everywhere in our lived environment and  global fertility rates are declining, it begs the question—“What is in all our blood? What is it doing and how do we stop the generational impact of these chemicals?”There is considerable research linking EDCs and PFAS to reproductive toxicity for three successive generations. Clearly, it's impractical to ban plastic—it is the workhorse of the economy. We just need better/innovative plastics or like-materials (to be created, funded and scaled).

As awareness and understanding increases around innovations that are benign by design, scalable and profitable, you are creating informed investors who are channeling capital to these breakthroughs. It provides a roadmap for investors and consumers to be excited about, channels investment into real solutions and accelerates progress.
 

What’s an example of how SOM’s mission informed your professional path?

I fell into healthcare, perhaps because I had an accident at a young age and interacted with the healthcare system extensively. This gave me a great appreciation for the sector but also a deep understanding of how difficult the healthcare industry is to navigate. When I began working in healthcare, concepts such as Social Determinants of Health, and health equity were not focus areas and not getting the attention and investment they are now.  I was looking for models that had both of these together, not adjacent.

I brought that perspective to SOM and was the only student in SOM’s Sustainability Track with a healthcare background, in my cohort. That said, I was surrounded by classmates with deep knowledge of sustainability and deep experience across other industries and sectors. I liked to note that I was the least knowledgeable member of my cohort in sustainability, but my classmates welcomed my insight on how the healthcare industry operates and the SOPs we’d have to navigate to drive sustainable solutions.

The way SOM structures the track is like a perfect petri dish for innovation. Having both a vertical and horizontal expert leading at the intersection of sustainability and every other sector was invaluable. It allowed me to approach my sustainability education as an innovation program and the industry is still evolving and setting regulatory standards for itself. Our goal was to come together as multidisciplinary specialists to combine our skills and the diversity of perspectives to drive innovation.  

SOM’s unique ability to deliver this cross functional, cross sector, cross industry perspective ultimately has helped me unite sustainability, innovation and healthcare in my career.

And in my interviews with prospective SOM students, I see a lot more interest in sustainability from the healthcare industry, and that’s important.
 

What’s an SOM experience that helped shape the way you understand business and society?

You can’t mitigate the healthcare impact of climate change without uniting the market, non- market and public sectors; by that I mean for-profit enterprises, non-profit enterprises and NGOs and non-market enterprises—the regulators, policy makers and lobbyists.  Healthcare is the perfect place to combine these perspectives and align agendas to drive progress.

SOM’s multi-disciplinary approach gives students the greatest opportunity to understand the complexity of the healthcare industry in a way that makes them better leaders capable of making bigger and more sustainable impacts and progress.
 

What’s a favorite SOM memory, faculty member, mentor or class?

Among the faculty whose approach and insights had a significant impact on my career are Lorenzo Caliendo, for his global affairs and macroeconomics class, and Heather Tookes for her Markets & Corporate Finance class; I literally used much of that material to inform the way I approached getting my first job at EY post SOM and much of my early work there. I also really appreciate Daylian Cain;  he is an incredible negotiations czar with a wealth of insights, and I’d be terrified to be on the other side of a deliberation from him. K. Sudhir and Zoe Chance have also been a huge support to me during and after my time at SOM.

My mentors are Paul Anastas and Todd Cort. Paul is my co-author and both a professional and personal mentor. He is a giant in his field and among the most generous and humble leaders I know. I consider him what I call a mentor-by-example, in that one doesn’t even need to have ongoing conversations with him about specific issues as he demonstrates leadership and mentorship in everything he does and you can learn a lot just by watching him and following his work. Todd Cort is an incredible builder and dot connector and another mentor. He is able to view the industry in a way that no one else can or does and articulates it as if it was the easiest thing in the world to do.  Every student who has the benefit of his course will have so many advantages in the way they solve challenges in any industry.
 

What are you excited about for the year ahead?

I’m excited to see further momentum at the intersection of finance and science and excited to foster the innovation there on both the founder and funder side and see how it takes shape. And I’m excited for my second book with Paul Anastas, focused on proving that climate change is here, now, and there are several promising technologies that will enable us to do something about it!
On a personal note, in 2024, I’m looking forward to getting my son more engaged in climate science and technology games to facilitate learning. He already loves exploring how things work and I can’t wait to make science come alive for him through gamification of the learning process. My newborn is still too young for this but I am so excited to raise a daughter that will be fearless and live in a world where she has the opportunity to have a seat at any table.

Just Five Questions is an initiative led by the SOM Alumni Advisory Board. Want to learn more? Contact Lee Race ’93 with feedback, thoughts, and/or questions.