The way forward is in behavioural change and partnerships between healthcare providers and the corporate world.
Published Dec 21, 2025 | 7:00 AM ⚊ Updated Dec 21, 2025 | 7:00 AM
Ninety percent of companies are doing wellness just as a checklist.
Synopsis: A panel discussion on obesity and workplace wellness underscored the need for having structured wellness programmes that not only explained how to access benefits, but also their importance.
Martin and Mahesh work for the same company with a global footprint. Eric is in the firm’s US facility, while Mahesh works from India.
Both Martin and Mahesh’s managers sent them an email late on Friday evening; Martin’s manager did not expect a response until Monday morning, while Mahesh’s boss wanted a reply within a two-hour window.
Mahesh represented a large number of corporate employees in India, whose working hours ate into their personal time, and even extended to weekend off days.
Indian employees have, albeit reluctantly, gotten used to the work culture where a thin, blurred line differentiates their working and personal time. For Martin, however, the boundary line is well-marked, rigid, legally binding and sacred.
For Mahesh, and many others like him, the work situation is not dramatic enough to be termed a crisis, but is persistent enough to reshape habits, stress levels, gut health and metabolism — not to mention its effect on his family life.
This work culture was the backdrop of the Gut and Metabolic Summit — 2025 at the AIG Hospitals, Gachibowli, in Hyderabad, on Thursday, 18 December.
A panel discussion, Workplace Wellness: Is Obesity Eating Up Your Employees’ Work Productivity?, repeatedly circled back to one aspect: obesity and metabolic disease are not just medical conditions. They are shaped by the way people live and work.
Moderated by Capri Jalota, the Chief Operating Officer of AIG, the discussion had corporate leaders, office space designers, and pharma specialists as the participants.
Work-related metabolic diseases, the panellists opined, have become a global pandemic. This shifts the lens away from individual choices and towards systems that normalise long and odd hours, chronic stress, and unhealthy routines.
Jalota acknowledged that wellness could no longer remain an optional feature, something that the company does just to tick a box. For several panellists, the issue was not a lack of awareness but the absence of a specific structure.
Ranga Pothula, Managing Director, Infor India, spoke of the IT sector and its ‘routine’ long and irregular hours. The company recruits graduates straight out of college, and the impact is evident.
“People came in looking like skeletons,” he noted. “In three years, their form completely changed.”
What is missing, he said, was structured wellness programmes that not only explained how to access benefits, but also their importance. Third-party organisations, such as Silverwoke, have stepped in to help with the programme, but another panellist, Sandeep Patnaik, noted that the intent was often diluted.
“Ninety percent of companies are doing wellness just as a checklist,” Patnaik, Managing Director of JLL, said.
The focus, currently, has largely been on gym memberships and healthier cafeteria options. “Empathy is missing,” he stated, adding that organisations often failed to recognise wellness as a spectrum.
On that spectrum was mental well-being, more often than not an afterthought. “There’s a long way to go for Indian companies to behave responsibly about wellness,” he said.
Karthik Duddala, Enterprise Technology Leader, shared his work experience abroad. He acknowledged the gap between Indian and global workspaces, citing the example of the Friday night email.
There is a gap, but the gap is bridging,” he said, pointing to the growing presence of global organisations in India and increasing awareness, now beginning in schools.
He noted technology as something that should be used to support the bridge. “Tech needs to enable the person to drive a habit,” Duddala said.
Another field witnessing modifications is office designing, the space where people spend most of their waking hours.
Satyanarayana Mathala, President, TFMC, who designs office spaces, traced a clear change over two decades. “Twenty years ago, the wellness factor was just five percent. Today, it’s 80 percent,” he said.
But physically redesigning the environment cannot be the only thing to counter cultural expectations. Deepak Sapra, CEO, Dr Reddy’s Lab, brought the focus back to leadership and personal balance.
“Balanced people will make the right calls,” he said, suggesting that wellness should be a part of every company’s strategy.
He added that the next generation would place things in a better perspective in terms of work-life balance, pushing their host organisations to adapt.
On the growing intrigue around GLP-1 drugs for obesity, Sapra offered caution. Though the pharma sector is excited about the drug, it is “just one tool, not a magic pill to cure everything.”
The way forward, the panel agreed, was in behavioural change and partnerships between healthcare providers and the corporate world. In that context, AIG’s plan to work directly with organisations to identify underlying problems was presented as an attempt to pinpoint root causes.
As the summit concluded, it became clear that knowledge about obesity and metabolic wellness was already out there. What remains to be acknowledged is the impact of the workplace on the matter.
(Edited by Majnu Babu).
