Welcome to another episode of the Top Floor Podcast, where we delve into the journeys of transformative leaders in the business world. In this episode, host Simon Lewis, Vistage UE Chair, sits down with Petr Tolochkov, the trailblazing founder of Way2AR.
Petr Tolochkov is a visionary in immersive technology, known for his groundbreaking work in AR and AI. Under his leadership, Way2AR has revolutionised how industries, including pharmaceuticals and manufacturing, leverage VR solutions. With a portfolio of over 300 successful projects and high-profile clients such as Pfizer and Novartis, Petr has established Way2AR as a leader in innovative digital experiences.
Join us as Petr shares his insights on leading a company to success in highly regulated sectors, the key challenges of integrating new technologies, and his vision for the future of immersive tech. From his early career in pharmaceuticals to his current work on cutting-edge AI projects, this conversation provides a deep dive into the mind of a pioneering entrepreneur.
Don't miss this enlightening discussion about the intersection of technology and leadership. Subscribe for more episodes and stay updated on the latest in business innovation.
Connect with Petr Tolochkov on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petrtolochkov/
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From
The Top Floor Team
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Welcome to another episode of the top floor where we dive into the leadership journeys of some of the most innovative minds in business in the Middle East today. I'm your host, Simon Lewis, a Vistage UE Chair, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Peter Tolotroff, a visionary leader in the world of immersive technology. Peter is the founder of Way2R, a company that has significantly impacted AR and AI solutions across various industries, including pharmaceuticals and the manufacturing industries, by providing cutting-edge VR solutions. With over 300 successful projects and a growing list of clients that include industry giants like Pfizer, Novartis, Peter has established himself as a pioneer in leveraging modern technologies to drive engagement and innovation. Not only has he led Way2R to be recognized as the best health care startup in Eastern Europe at the emerging Challenge 2022, but he's also an expert in creating vibrant digital experiences that transform how companies interact with their stakeholders. Join me as we explore Peter's leadership journey and the challenges he's overcome and his vision for the future of immersive technology. Peter, a very warm welcome to the Vistage top floor. Hi Simon, thank you for a so warm introduction of myself. Pleasure. Okay, look, let's get started and look at your early career. What inspired you to move into the pharmaceutical industry and into the world of VR, AR and AI? Yeah, well, I think that from the beginning I had an entrepreneur soul in spirits because the first business, I started in the eighth form when I was about 15 years old and that was successful, small business that worked for the next five years and so this is the very early age. I launched different projects, different businesses, some of them was a great experience, some of them was successful and after that I understood that I need to have a bigger mind to have a bigger structure of how big companies work and I decided to work in corporation to see how big structures could benefit and I applied to several big companies and one of the biggest companies in pharma offered me a job and I started to work so I spent four years working in pharma and I'm very proud of this period because me and my team launched several great projects for patients, for doctors, I was responsible for several medical products and it was a great experience. I really understood how big corporation work and some of this knowledge I get to my company afterwards. Also, I understood how to work with big companies because as a product manager in pharma I had more than 10 agencies who worked with me as a client and I was a very tough client, I was very strict in my work and I understood how you as a partner of big corporation should be to have a beneficial collaboration. Also, it's about networking. For four years working in big pharma I then have connections in approximately each pharmaceutical companies and once I opened my eyes and understood that I'm ready to move on, that I'm ready to launch a new business and I simply started to search for some opportunities. It was about 2017 years. I started to participate in participation some IT events and once I visited the hackathon it's a developers competition. I get acquainted with several great developers just on this event and we organized as a team and one we want this first competition and started to propose our solutions to different companies. Can I just stop you there and go back to the early days of your pharmaceutical? What were the sort of projects that you were working on that gave you this inspiration? Can you describe them? My best project that I still love the most is the biggest patient support program in the region. We launched a very big project to support patients with diabetes with physical schools of treatments with diabetes. We had a big hotline that received a lot of calls from patients. We developed a very great website that had hundreds thousands of visitors. We launched webinars, we invited the medical society so it was a great and big program that benefits a lot of patients and we launched it, we pushed it and it's still working and it's a great thing and it was a great experience from project part and it was a great result from social part. It was the most important. Sorry to talk to you but obviously project management is a skill in itself. It involves obviously understanding easier customers, the leadership of getting a team on the side and making sure they deliver to the to the right specification at the right time but also keeping on budget and keeping on time and here you are playing with the new technology there, relatively new. How did you manage to do all of that? I always was interested in new technologies even before starting working in big corporation and also there. I was later of several new IT solutions that we launched in pharma and it was a field of my interest and because of that I always was up-to-date and somehow I felt that it's a way that I want to do. I had several startups before. I went to a pharmaceutical company but that was a great experience and I understood that I need to expand my knowledge in IT and the last days of working in pharma I started visiting again a lot of IT events and to expand my knowledge in this field. Okay so way to our hands growing significantly on your leadership especially in the pharmaceutical sector, can you share some of the key challenges you faced when introducing immersive technology into such a regulated industry? Yeah medical and pharma is very regulated but now I understand why now I am very calm about this because healthcare industry is responsible for our health and they shouldn't be in a hurry of integrating new solutions. They should be very accurate and they should be very deep in deciding such things and so it's a way they think and because of that working with pharma we work not only with digital managers and product managers so with guys wanting to push the business but we also work with legal compliance medical regulatory and other colleagues who think how to decrease risks of pharma company. So working with such a client you should understand that they think not only how such solution your solution could benefit your business but also how this solution couldn't have risks and it's a very important thing. So the most challenge is for me is to be persistent and to have a time to convince them to that it's don't have risks that everything is okay so for me it was time because me as a previous product manager in the pharma I deeply understood these things that pharma have compliance and other things and so it will be it was okay for me. So with over 300 projects completed what's been the most rewarding project for you and your team at Way2R and give us the reasons why. Well I have three of them three projects that I like the most. First project is our first project in the life of our company because it was at the beginning of our company it was a really complex process to convince the first client to trust us. It was a long way we convinced the first client but finally one of them trusted us and we started to prepare a preparation for the biggest event in the industry and so created not so greatest visualization it was pretty simple augmented reality application on iPads that had several graphs of clinical studies in augmented reality and so a simple metaphor visualization of how the product works but it was very effective during the event more than 4,000 doctors saw that project and it was 4.8 NPS and after that this client started to work with us and launched more than 10 projects and also we brought this case and showed to another clients and it boosted our business. So the first one is the first one I like it very much. Second project was the project that we launched during the COVID-19 because all clients went for online and we understood that we should be even more interactive for our clients because doctors and everyone was difficult to interact during online and we launched 3D spaces for medical events. By now it could have name like a metaverse but in 2020 it had name 3D spaces for medical events simple name and it worked also very well we got with one client we increased 4 times doctors and enrollment in the website during the event and it was a really great event and the last project that I like is the project we are working on now it's AI psychologist that will help patient with some psychological issues to feel better we are working actively on this now it consists from ultra-realistic avatar of a doctor AI model that could very professionally help patients with some psychological issues so and this is a very significant product that we are working on now so it's one of my main focuses now. Wow okay so look you've been in the in the industry since the age of 17 if you don't mind me asking how old are you now? How long ago of my company? No how old are you? You started at 17 yeah okay I am 30 years old okay so for what that's what 13 years quick maths what sets way to AR apart from its competition because it's still a relatively young company yet you really built it up and as you said earlier you know through your networks and getting a great team of developers together but what sets it apart from the competition because it is very competitive environment yeah thank you a great question I think that's three or four key things first I know my client very well me personally worked in this field and I understood them because I was on the side but if you don't know if you haven't worked in the same sphere you should make a lot of development a lot of touches with your client you should have friends in this field so first thing is to know your client the second thing is to know a specifics of your business in our field medical medical field was a vital and crucial thing to succeed because all clients asked do you work in this field do you work in this field for instance do you work in oncology, cardiology, aftermology etc and it was important for them that we knew this field and so we had several medical experts in our team so the second thing is to understand the specifics and the third thing is to be the best in some fields in something speaking about us we were the best in augmented reality medical visualizations we spent a lot of time growing our expertise in this field and we invited a lot of talented people to boost our expertise in this field and the fourth thing is a time in the market on the one hand yes my company is still young on the other hand so we spent several years consistently speaking without clients proposing them such solutions and living in this sphere so it seems to me that you know one of the key areas i love to focus on and indeed in visage in our visage meetings we talk about and understand the customer customer centricity and it's the partnership between us not just a seller and a buyer relationship so strategic partnerships seem to be your key focus what are you looking for in a strategic partner and how do these partnerships enhance your business yeah especially when we speak about Middle East when we speak about United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia i believe and i know that so having a strategic partner who will help you to scale on this market is a vital thing to have a really big business because we with without partners we already reached more than 100 pharmaceutical companies in the region but i truly understand that if we want to grow much more bigger in healthcare sector if you want to grow in some other areas of our business interest for instance we also have a branch in entertainment immersive technologies front of time and i deeply understand that it's very important to have a wide partner so by now i'm looking for a partner in United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia who will help us to grow on this market who have the right connections and who we could have a synergy from our side we could create the best of class augmented virtual reality projects that we could create best of class immersive projects using AR VR or artificial intelligence and so our partner will cover market access so yes i am now focused on this part so so you've mentioned AR VR AI how do you see the role of these technologies evolving in the next five years i'm not going to go any further because it's changing so quickly and especially in the healthcare industry i mean you've talked about AI helping you know psychology what other areas do you think it's going to actually impact yeah i see three main trends that will have an effect on healthcare first of all is augmented reality glasses starting from Apple vision pro and so now actively developing new glasses several days ago i explored a new augmented reality glass from one of the greatest Chinese companies so now it's a new rally of augmented reality devices and so in the next five years we will see significant growth in this sector and this will make a real impact on medical fields of course Apple vision pro one that already exists wouldn't be isn't the best solution for this it's like a iPhone one in the augmented reality glasses field but now we understand that how it could works and to understand that the biggest corporations like Apple are focused on these songs so first of all is augmented reality glasses expansion second of course is artificial intelligence from one side the AI will help and accelerate content creation by now it's already possible to create some 3d models with AI but in a few years it will be i hope pretty easy to create entire metiverse using AI so on that on the one hand on the other it's a conversational and intellectual part of AI now you could help AI to be a real doctor not to replace it but to be a second mind or to help in some specific directions for instance to work as a cognitive therapy therapist and to help patients to feel better and in the five years we will see great results of it because now AI is working so fast and developing month by month even day by day so and that last thing that will make an effect on medicine field is virtual reality glasses and generally AR VR industry is beginning a common thing for all of us and so it's very important that we are getting used to this technology it's very important because adoption of a new technology is very important though in other all people wow it's exciting times that it's happened and you know your your your background also includes the co-founding of clever bots an AI based solutions company how is your spirit experience with AI influence the development direction of way to AR? Well launching the clever bots I saw the first steps of AI because when they launched this company we had to train a long data sets of some content to educate some AI algorithms and it was a long way we are waiting for a new solutions like charger PT that nowadays so for me it was an experience that I saw how AI starts somehow for me at least and so having a look off the development of such emerging technology from some beginning steps and I also am very proud of launching such a great company that is still working and still on the market and very active I am very proud of my partners who is leading this company by now so it was an experience of launching a new and complex AI algorithms and it helps me now that way that I am not afraid of developing a new emerging technology it's it's easy if you when you launch several very difficult projects before you will get a problem solving mindset and technical solving mindset so so okay I mean I mean I find that absolutely fascinating picture I mean it's an amazing one I find the technologies just incredible and how but how we've actually evolved to get there but what advice would you give to other entrepreneurs looking to innovate in highly specialized industries like the pharmaceuticals or health care or indeed your industry what advice would you give those entrepreneurs first of all don't be afraid of specifics it's okay specifics is everywhere and so in medical and health care industry and another you just simply should be ready to get these specifics to understand this if you are an expert in this field great you have one step forward if not but you want to launch some project in this field just simply invite a partner or main employer and experts in your team and grow these expertise with your colleagues but don't forget also to understand by yourself you as a leader of the company you should also know such solution speaking about myself I was an expert in medical field in pharmaceutical field but launching IT companies in the beginning I wasn't an expert in IT development and I asked my technical director to teach me how to code and I learned how to code not to code the projects but to understand how my coders team how my team of their developers work and it helped me to speak with them on the same language so this is the first thing secondly also you should know your client very well spend time on making customer development so invite your clients to have a chat conversation understand their profile how do they decide it's very important to understand how your client choose something or not choose something and the last thing is to focus on in what thing you will be very best of and it should be the main thing that helps your clients and focus on this expand your expertise and invite the best people in this field and the first thing is stay on the market everything requires time and it's difficult to boost something in a few days in a few months you will always have some downs after first apps and you should be very persistent and have a long motivation to grow steadily so I mean that's a great segue into my final question you know as a leader in a rapidly evolving field how do you stay ahead of the curve and and what keeps you motivated to continue pushing the boundaries of what's possible with immersive technology yeah as I told in the beginning of this meeting I have an entrepreneurial spirit and so and I think that I will work with such technologies all of my life because I really like it I really like the creation of new things I really like when my projects scaling so for me it's not going to then some finish line for me it's a purpose that I really like I like the process of creation communication with partners clients colleagues and so I like the process of growing and trying to do my best to grow every year and we grew several years for two times each year and it's like a way of life and the because of that I have a long-lasting motivation with now with any problems because I like this field I like the impact and I like the process. Peter Tomoff it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the top floor today and learning about your journey in immersive technologies and the impact you're making on the farm suit school and healthcare industry I wish you every success in the future I'm sure we're going to speak again and look forward to the next generation of development and how you're going to help us stay healthy good luck and keep well thank you very much Simon it's a great pleasure to start and modeling with speaking with you. Okay thank you very much thank you.
