Mr. Subroto Mukherjee
Mr. Subroto Mukherjee
Achiever's Success Story
Relentless efforts for the betterment of the nation
Subroto Mukherjee has been awarded ‘The Man of Excellence’ award for the year 2021-22. He is an alumnus of the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington; XLRI, Jamshedpur and PSG College, Coimbatore and has a rich and varied career, spanning 37 years.
During his initial career, he has served in various leadership roles and prestigious appointments in the Indian Navy, which include the Command of two warships viz INS Chatak & INS Nireekshak. In addition, he has served on board five other warships in various capacities and four submarines. He was the first COO (Maritime Operations) of India’s only Tri-Service Command in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands and was involved in it’s initial planning and set-up. He was the last Fortress Operations & Plans Officer of Fortress Command. He has also been the Chief Instructor at the Naval Academy. He was actively involved in disaster management efforts during the Tsunami in 2004 and Floods in Mumbai in 2005.
Post his tenure in the Indian Navy, Subroto has been COO of Synergy RMS Pvt Ltd, Head of Marine Operations at Orbit Corporation Ltd and is presently the Vice President and Head of Administration, Facilities Management & Security (AFS) for Cipla, one of India’s oldest and largest pharmaceutical companies.
He is the first person in Cipla’s 87 year history to be entrusted with this responsibility and has set up the entire AFS vertical from scratch. During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Subroto and his team were quick to track the global spread and understand the portends of this black swan event. By the third week of January 2020, they had recommended and stopped international travel and by mid-February, domestic travel. This helped, to a large extent, in curbing spread of Covid within the organisation. The team also procured sanitizers, masks, handheld thermal guns and put into place SOPs for social distancing by early March 2020, when such initiatives were relatively unknown in the Indian Corporate sphere. In partnership with in-house IT Team, Subroto designed a digital self-declaration form, which was later adopted by other pharma and non-pharma companies. Subroto also took the forward-looking step of retrofitting UVC lights in all HVAC trunkings in their offices and portable air purifiers with UVC, Carbon & HEPA filters, where such retro-fitment was not possible. This provided a very safe internal ambient environment for office goers. By the time the Govt declared a lockdown, the Cipla AFS team was ready with their operational plans to ensure a safe work environment. Subroto and his team were also instrumental as a part of the the greater organisational effort, to get all their colleagues vaccinated within two months of availability of vaccines. They also set up quarantine centres across the country for colleagues and their families, along with 24×7 ambulance services and ensured availability of Oxygen Concentrators and Oxygen bottles. These efforts and initiatives were critical for the nation as Cipla was the manufacturer/ supplier of all medicines (apart from Vaccines) prescribed to fight COVID-19 in India.