Mentors

Dr. Ashwin Kashikar, founder and Managing Director of Genext Genomics, has gained his Ph.D from Delhi University in 2007. He is functional as the General Manager at Ankur Seeds Pvt Ltd, An agribiotechnology based company. He brings along with himself huge experience of academia and Industrial leadership qualities. With a vision to develop the technologies which can provide quality and cost effective scientific solution, he founded Genext Genomics. With his Enterpenuership qualities, GNG aims to be leading the race for quality products and services.

Dr. Madhur is Consultant, Translational Medicine at CureSkin: Dermatologist on your smartphone. Earlier he was translational Research Lead, Jehangir Clinical Development Centre, Pune. Dr Madhur is a MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine; Bachelor of Surgery), Grant Medical College, Mumbai. PhD Immunopharmacology, University College London, UK. MRes Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University College London, UK. He worked as a Co-Investigator, Centre for Clinical Pharmacology, University College London, UK. Clinical trial research assistant, Division of Medicine, University College London, London, UK. He has several publications and patents in the area of infection and inflammation.

Premnath holds a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology ‐ Bombay and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. He has also been a Chevening Technology Enterprise Fellow with the Centre for Scientific Enterprises, London Business School and Cambridge University, UK. He brings with him considerable experience in technology development and commercialization, working with start‐up companies (in Cambridge‐UK and India) and engaging with large corporations on research and consulting projects as project leader.

Mr. Ravi previously held senior positions for Sushrut / Adler in Product Development, Sales and Marketing, Regulatory affairs. He is an accomplished professional with over 25 years in the medical device industry encompassing leadership roles in New Product Development, Quality Management and Regulatory affairs, Marketing, Sales and Business Development. Mr. Ravi has proven track record of managing the new product development process from conceptualization and market analysis through development, risk management, pre-clinical evaluation, verification and validation, test marketing to commercialization. Outstanding communication talents with proven ability to build and lead highly efficient teams, train technical professionals and to convey complex concepts in understandable terms. Especially skilled at problem analysis and resolution, strategic planning and budget controls. Strong background of interactions with Key Opinion Leaders, customers and trade channels throughout Asia, Middle East, Africa and some areas of Europe.

Dr. Ravindra B. Ghooi, is a pharmacologist with over 46 years of experience, in the field of drug discovery and development. He holds a Masters in Pharmacology and a Doctorate in Medicine, and has trained at
Haffkine Institute in Mumbai and Max Planck Institute in Gottingen, Germany. Dr. Ghooi spent over twenty years in the pharmaceutical industry, heading the medical department as a Medical Advisor. He has been involved in clinical research for the last 35 years, in the role of a sponsor, CRO, regulatory expert and advisor. He has been teaching clinical research for over a decade and has authored two books on the subject. He presently is a consultant in research, serves a number of ethics committees, and editorial boards of two journals. He has over 65 research papers to his credit, and guides students at the Ph. D level.

Mr. Oswal is is a Digital Technology Leader with 15 years of executive experience in Start-ups, Technology, e-Commerce / Retail. He is a Co-Founder of Infibeam Avenues a publicly listed digital technology company. As its Chief Operating Officer he was instrumental in the setup and management of the retail vertical Infibeam.com & platform business BuildABazaar.com. He actively invests in startups in Impact Space and loves to engage with entrepreneurs. In his last role Sachin was the CEO for the Digital / Omni Channel business @Shoppers Stop. He was responsible for the strategy and execution of connecting the digital channels & stores for creating a seamless shopping experience for the Shoppers Stop customers. He has led the Amazon investment of $28M into Shoppers Stop and managed the partnership between the two companies. Prior to Shoppers Stop, Sachin was Co founder & COO at Infibeam.com co-founding Infibeam, he worked at Amazon.com in the Fulfillment / Ordering teams, Distributed Systems & Digital Video teams at Amazon.com. Mr. Oswal has done his B.E (Electronics) and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University. As part of his research he has contributed to many journal & conference papers in Information Visualization and Speech Processing.

Sarika Phatak is Sr. Director and Head of Products & Solutions for the Healthcare vertical in Harman connected Services. She is a veteran in healthcare technologies with extensive experience in R&D, product design, product management and business development for a number of healthcare product and service offerings. She has global experience in defining solutions for diagnostic and therapeutic products and connected care at large. Her areas of interest include innovation in medical devices, connected care and population health management, using advanced technologies and design led strategies. Sarika has wide experience in Fortune 500 companies such as Philips, Harman and Bell Helicopter Textron.  After completing her Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Texas, she worked in avionics design in Bell Helicopter Textron. She has extensive hands on experience on working on all aspects of end to end product design and development including hardware, software and industrial design. Sarika worked in haptic technology and surgery simulation for her master’s thesis.  She has been working with teams in building innovative healthcare products and solutions throughout her career. She has deep experience of product life cycle engineering. She has managed several projects through the entire life cycle of the project especially developing a product concept into viable, scalable designs and taking them through prototyping and manufacturing phase. She has worked in the areas of connected healthcare, patient engagement, minimal invasive diagnostic medical devices, care coordination, image guided therapy, etc. Sarika has served in various leadership roles in program management, product management, solution architecture and business analysis. She has also served as Head of Partnerships and Head of Solutions responsible for designing the solutions using across various companies. She was also actively involved in mergers and acquisition strategy to form differentiated solution offering. She has deep knowledge of international markets and has expertise about product design and customization for global markets.

Mr.Sastri is an Entrepreneur with 2 exits. A successful entrepreneur: Built & sold two large services ventures in India & SE Asia. Presently, Co-founder of AI & Big Data product company. Rich experience in incubating new-age ideas & technologies (digital, AI, IoT,biotech), working with young talent and new-age consumers. Board & leadership experience: Successful M&A strategy as India Chairperson of global corporation. Hands-on experience in building businesses at scale, fundraising, restructuring, global expansion, and partnerships. Deep interest in socially-relevant initiatives: Mentoring & angel investing with range of for-profit social enterprises. Grassroots experience of running own not-for-profit.