Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited , announced today the appointment of Dr. Mahender Nayak as Area Head for the Company’s ICMEA (India, C.I.S., Middle East, Turkey, and Africa) Area. In his current capacity, Dr. Nayak will lead the company’s operations from Dubai, United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), where he will be based.

Dr. Nayak has more than 20 years of performance-driven leadership experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, having worked in multinational and regional companies. Before this role, he oversaw Portfolio Management for Takeda’s Growth and Emerging Markets Business Unit based in Singapore (2018 to 2020). Prior to that, Dr. Nayak was the General Manager of Takeda’s operations in Korea.

Commenting on his new role, Dr. Nayak said, “This is an exciting time to move to a part of the world that is teeming with great opportunities to increase patient access to Takeda’s highly innovative medicines. We aim to do this through our commercial activities and commitments around our approaches to Access to Medicines across rare diseases, oncology, neuroscience, and gastroenterology.”

Across ICMEA, Takeda collaborates with governments and regulators, to ensure that its diverse portfolio of innovative medicines is made available to patients as quickly and safely as possible.

“These countries are open to innovation and partnering with world-leading R&D-led organizations like Takeda. Our diverse talent across the company’s presence in over 82 geographies bring many different experiences, backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives that help drive health innovation and ultimately benefit patients. This can only be done by nurturing and developing the best talents and ultimately becoming an employer of choice”, added Dr. Nayak.

Dr. Nayak started his career as a physician in Bangalore, India and has an MBA in Marketing. He joined Takeda in 2011 and, since then, grew within the company to hold various senior international and regional roles.