Worcester Business Journal

12 Worcester Business Journal | March 7, 2022 | wbjournal.com F O C U S B U S I N E S S L E A D E R S O F T H E Y E A R Batra sets a high standard at Waters Large Business Leader of the Year Udit Batra President & CEO Waters Corp. Headquarters: Milford His birthplace: New Delhi, India He's a gamer: Batra's love of engineering was inspired by an Atari game. A ll that stood in the way of an excited 8th grade Indian boy and his Atari game console was a broken transformer. Batteries were expensive and out of the question, so he went to his school teacher for advice. e teacher offered to teach him electronics on the condition the student pass on his newfound knowledge to his peers. e boy learned how to fix his game, but more importantly the lessons sparked a passion for engineering and an appreciation for individuals which would stay with Udit Batra throughout his career, even as he became president and CEO of the Milford biomedical company Waters Corp. in September 2020. "If you had a cup of coffee this morning, if you had any breakfast this morning, chances are you have experienced the benefit of our products. We make sure that the food that you eat, the water that you drink, the air that you breathe is clean, and that is what our instruments are designed to do," Batra said. Science is the driving force behind Waters' innovation and product development. As an engineer, Batra values data-driven research; however, he is not afraid to take risks and encourages his team to think out of the box. Batra's risk-taking attitude is exemplified by Waters' Desorption Electrospray Ionization swab. is prototype used special ionization technology to rapidly detect traces of the coronavirus in humans within 90 seconds. A strong team was formed, prototypes were created, and heavy monetary investments were made in the project. However, aer many scientific experiments, it was determined that the project would not be viable. Rather than seeing the risk as a failure, Batra was proud of his team for their hard work and thorough research as they tried to solve a public health problem. "Science has a way of humbling you, and the science did work, so what; and we celebrated that effort across the organization," Batra said. As the head of a biomedical company with $2.4 billion in annual revenues, one might think Batra would be solely focused on the bottom line. However, he is admittedly a people person who appreciates diversity of thought, which is especially important since he leads 7,400 employees throughout 35 countries. Beginning his new role in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of Batra's hardest personal challenges was meeting his new colleagues through a two-dimensional screen. "We are so three dimensional. We say more with our body language than we do with our language, and you cannot easily understand what people are BY SLOANE M. PERRON Worcester Business Journal Staff Writer PHOTO/COURTESY WATERS CORP.

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