Zimmer Biomet names new Asia Pacific president

Name: Chintan Desai

New title: President of Asia Pacific region, Zimmer Biomet

Previous title: Vice president and general manager of international growth and export markets, Alcon

Zimmer Biomet said Tuesday it has appointed Chintan Desai president of its Asia Pacific region, effective immediately.

Desai joins Zimmer from Alcon, where he most recently worked as the vice president and general manager of international growth and export markets, based in Switzerland. Desai began at Alcon as vice president of surgical for Asia Pacific in 2022. Based in Singapore, Desai led the company’s medtech franchise across multiple markets in the region. Before joining Alcon, Desai worked at GE HealthCare for more than 22 years.

The executive “knows this market, he knows how to lead and he will be a strong addition to our team,” Zimmer CEO Ivan Tornos said in a statement. Tornos highlighted Desai’s nearly three decades of leadership experience and deep expertise leading businesses across the Asia Pacific region.

Desai joined Zimmer following a quarter in which the company’s international operations faced scrutiny. The start of 2026 was “the first quarter in quite some time that [outside the U.S.] growth has trailed the U.S. and likely trailed where end markets look to be performing,” Goldman Sachs analyst David Roman said in April on Zimmer’s first-quarter earnings call. 

Tornos cited Zimmer’s decision to move from having “a large network of distributors to having one, if not two, partners” in markets including China as a factor in the international results.

On the fourth-quarter call in February, then-CFO Suketu Upadhyay said Zimmer expected sales “to be slightly down in China as we continue to reconfigure our go-to-market strategies.”

Upadhyay added that Zimmer expected “Asia Pacific to be down year-over-year, primarily because of the Japan biennial price decrease.” The price decrease is a “normal part of our business,” said Upadhyay, who left Zimmer in April.

Desai is replacing Sang Yi, who will leave Zimmer on Aug. 28. Zimmer hired Yi in 2013 and promoted him to the role of president, Asia Pacific, in 2015. Yi became group president, Asia Pacific, at Zimmer in 2021.