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Ashyin Thakral Most Influential Business Leaders in India 2025
Leader at a Glance
Ashyin Thakral thrives at the intersection of innovation and human connection in healthcare. From building HealthKart’s content ecosystem to driving early growth at Swiggy, she has consistently turned ideas into impact. With a builder’s mindset, grit, and curiosity, she is shaping partnerships that make healthcare more trusted, accessible, and meaningful.
Name: Ashyin
Thakral
Designation: Head of Strategic Partnerships
Company: Tata 1mg
Industry: Digital Healthcare and E-Pharmacy
Country: India
Designation: Head of Strategic Partnerships
Company: Tata 1mg
Industry: Digital Healthcare and E-Pharmacy
Country: India
Ashyin Thakral Most Influential Business Leaders in India 2025
Healthcare is a sector where conversations often get buried under jargon and hard-to-pronounce terms and the real challenge in the sector is making people feel human, beyond providing services. Somewhere between metrics and milestones lies the art of connection. The understanding of what people truly need and building solutions they trust. That’s where Ashyin Thakral thrives. Ashyin Thakral’s career has been all about building things from the ground up. At HealthKart, she helped create the entire content base from scratch. At Swiggy, she jumped right into the fast-paced buzz of its early NCR days, growing sales and making things happen in the middle of start-up chaos. Now at Tata 1mg, she shapes partnerships that blend innovation with a human touch.
The thread running through it all is her “builder’s mindset”. Seeing a gap, taking charge, and turning an idea into something real. Her journey to leading strategic partnerships at Tata 1mg is about far more than strategy. It’s been driven by grit, curiosity, and the constant urge to create something meaningful. In an insightful conversation with The Portfolio Magazine, she shared her views about lessons learnt in this journey, challenges she navigated, her mindset and leadership style.
Please walk us through your career trajectory. What common thread connects your journey across industries?
I’ve had the opportunity to work across startups, high-growth tech companies, and now with Tata 1mg, but the common thread has always been a builder’s mindset. At HealthKart, I was part of the early team, laying the foundation for its content ecosystem. At Swiggy, I was among the first hires during the NCR launch, scaling sales, driving city growth, and navigating the chaos of hypergrowth. At Tata 1mg, I was given the space to build from the ground up again. I started with a sales-first approach but quickly grew into a cross-functional role touching marketing, brand, and strategic partnerships. Whether it’s crafting wellness campaigns, launching B2B verticals, or forging alliances, I’ve thrived in roles where I can create from zero. That instinct to see a gap, take ownership, and bring it to life has remained constant through every chapter of my career.
From Swiggy to Tata 1mg, what’s one unexpected lesson that still shapes your decisions?
One lesson that has stayed with me is that there’s no such thing as failure. Every misstep or decision that doesn’t work out is simply a lesson in disguise. You can’t give up. Often, it’s the intent that matters most. If your intent is right, you learn, adapt, and keep moving. It has also taught me to value progress over perfection. If you wait for everything to be polished and foolproof, you’re probably too late. But if you trust the process, stay close to your customer, and adjust quickly, you stay relevant and resilient. Different things work for different people, but for me, this mindset has been my go-to, time and again.
In healthcare marketing, what challenges have you faced in building trust?
Healthcare is more than a category; it’s personal. People come to platforms like Tata 1mg to seek answers, reassurance, and support, not just to shop. That brings with it a tremendous responsibility to operate with empathy and trust at the core. One of the biggest challenges is cutting through the noise without compromising credibility. The healthcare space is filled with complex information, pseudoscience, and, often, overpromising. Our goal has always been to simplify, not sensationalize. That means grounding everything, including content, communication, and partnerships, in credibility. We don’t sell; we solve. That mindset has helped us build both relevance and reliability. Every word, every partnership, every feature must align with our brand promise: making healthcare understandable, accessible, and affordable for every Indian.
“Healthcare is more than a category; it’s personal. People come to platforms like Tata 1mg to seek answers, reassurance, and support, not just to shop. ”
What’s one recent partnership or campaign at Tata 1mg that truly excited you and why?
Have you ever heard of a wellness carnival that celebrates healthcare? That’s exactly what made launching Tata 1mg BE so exciting. Beyond just an event, BE, India’s first health and wellness carnival, is an experience. It’s about bringing people together to be themselves, enjoy small joys, and make health feel more engaging and human. We created BE to fill a much-needed gap in healthcare, a space where people learn about health and experience it. From concept to execution, it was built entirely from scratch. Watching people walk into a space that made healthcare feel warm and human made it all worth it. With two successful editions behind us, I can confidently say we’re just getting started. If I really think about it, every partnership we build today is driven by one intent: to bring healthcare closer to everyone. That purpose keeps us grounded, but there’s also a unique thrill in the process, whether it’s seeing a positive P&L, watching a trend graph spike, or finally cracking a long-awaited deal. That rush? It’s unmatched.
What mindset did you have to unlearn to thrive in larger ecosystems like Tata?
I’ve had to unlearn, or perhaps I’m still unlearning the idea that speed is everything. In a startup, moving fast is your edge. But in a legacy ecosystem like Tata, scale brings responsibility. What you build touches millions, which means slowing down to build it right. I’ve learned that speed without alignment leads to rework, and rework at scale is expensive. At Tata 1mg, I’ve found a balance. There is hustle, but there is structure for long-term thinking.. As someone once said, sometimes you need speed, and sometimes you need velocity. I’m learning to gauge when to sprint, when to hold, and how to build momentum that’s both sustainable and impactful. That said, the hustler in me is still very much alive. The instinct to build, to act, to solve. It doesn’t change. It just evolves with the ecosystem.
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