Priya Mande

A business-minded life sciences executive who has a track record of successfully adding significant value in Big Pharma and Biotech settings. Priya was a founding member of PsiOxus, an award-winning clinical-stage immuno-oncology company.

She has been in charge of finance, business development, corporate strategy, portfolio and project management, clinical operations, regulatory affairs, quality, and operations as the company has grown across the Atlantic. Board director with experience and company secretary.

Experience and Expertise: establishing and leading high-performing teams, developing strategy, negotiating deals, delivering projects, implementing change, promoting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture, and creating shareholder and patient-centric value.

Max Jakobs

Mrugank Parikh

Mrugank Parikh is a seasoned professional with over a decade of experience in digital transformation. He currently serves as the Managing Director (Partner) of Accenture in India. With a background in banking and mortgage, he has expertise in profiling customer behavior for marketing initiatives.

He also has experience in FMCG, including sales & operations planning and price forecasting. In manufacturing, he has implemented supply chain reengineering across multiple industries, including cement, sugar, chemicals, FMCG products, and logistics companies. Furthermore, he has expertise in media, including audience analytics, internet video analytics, and internet data mining. With his broad range of experience, Mrugank Parikh is well-equipped to drive digital transformation for Accenture's clients.

Dr. S Chandra shekaran

Dr. S Chandrashekaran is the Chairman and Managing Director of Vipragen Biosciences Pvt Ltd., a pre-clinical drug discovery company based in Mysore, India. With over 30 years of experience in the biotech industry, he has expertise in recombinant technologies, biochemistry, in vitro biology, drug discovery, and biopharma. He is a successful entrepreneur with a strong track record of successfully running and managing biotech start-up companies.

Dr. Chandra is the founder of Enzene Biosciences Ltd., a biopharma R&D company. He was instrumental in setting up biologics platforms, including peptides, rDNA drugs, and monoclonal antibody, and has successfully taken several biosimilars to clinical and pre-clinical stages. He is known for his aggressive value creation and is a 30X serial entrepreneur, who is currently leading Vipragen Biosciences Pvt Ltd.

Fiona Nielsen

Fiona Nielsen is the CEO of o2h technology. She is a bioinformatics scientist and the founder of DNADigest and Respositive. At Illumina Fiona was developing tools for interpretation of next-generation sequencing data and analysing cancer and FFPE samples sequenced on the latest technology.

She founded DNAdigest as a charity to promote best practices for efficient and ethical data sharing. In August 2014 Repositive Ltd was spun out of DNAdigest as a commercial entity to develop and provide novel software tools and mechanisms for sharing of data and grew to be the biggest platform for preclinical CROs offering translational oncology models and services.

Fiona has a Masters of Science in Bioinformatics from University of Southern Denmark.

Sanandan Sudhir

Sanandan is the President & CEO of the global product design & development group - Invent India, focused on taking new product ideas right through to prototype development and manufacturing. He is also the Founder of Indian Inventors Association, a global platform for bringing all inventors & innovators together.

Sanandan has worked with the likes of GE, Dell, GSK, Shell, Tata, Symphony, Eureka Forbes, Godrej, Voltas, Michelin, Polycom, Amul and others. He has deep insights of both local & global perspectives in relation to market differentiation, product design practices, consumer preferences & trends. He is an inventor at heart, and has been granted 6 patents (UK and USA) for his inventions while 21 others are pending in various stages. He is also a visiting faculty at NID Ahmedabad, NIFT and CEPT.

Elli AvrRam

Elli AvrRam is the first Swedish Greek actress to work in Bollywood. Elli came to prominence after participating in the Indian reality TV show Bigg Boss which helped her become a household name. Elli has worked in various South Indian and Hindi movies like Mickey Virus, Kis Kisko Pyaar Karoon, Naam Shabana and others.

Elli took an interest in figure skating, singing and dancing from her initial years. Her song Chamma Chamma for the movie Fraud Saiyyan gained over 200 million YouTube views in just three days after its release. She has four new projects coming this year.

Roopal Shah

Roopal Shah, co-founder of Indicorps, a US-based nonprofit organization that enables the global Indian diaspora to contribute to India’s development through volunteerism, is a Washington, D.C.-based attorney and social entrepreneur.
Prior to founding Indicorps, Shah served as an assistant US government attorney in San Diego and was an associate for Sherman and Sterling in Washington, D.C.

She holds an AB from Harvard University and a law degree from the University of Michigan, and is an avid surfer in her free time.

Dr. Catherine Beech

Dr. Catherine Beech OBE is a physician entrepreneur and a co-founder and CEO of Exonate, a biotech company working on therapies to treat vascular diseases. She has recently led the company onto a ground-breaking collaboration with Johnson and Johnson to develop a new eye drop for the treatment of retinal vascular diseases.

Catherine also co-founded the Cambridge Gateway Fund, an early stage fund that invested primarily in spinouts from UK Universities. She has invested in and sat as a non-executive director of 12 early stage companies helping them to grow and in some cases achieve successful IPOs or trade sales. Catherine has a degree in medicine from Birmingham University and was awarded an OBE in the year 2008 for her services to technology and innovation.

Dr. Anand Bhadalkar

Anand is the joint director of Gujarat State Biotechnology Mission at the Department of Science and Technology government of Gujarat. He is also the director of Savli Technology and Business Incubator. Previously, he has worked as a lecturer at the M.S. University of Baroda and is well connected with the biotechnology industry and inspires bio -technopreneurs.

Anand has a degree in biotechnology from Sardar Patel University and a Masters in Business Administration from IGNOU.

Simon Stockwell

Simon is a cell biologist with over 16 years’ postdoctoral experience working in academic research laboratories. Prior to joining o2h Discovery, he contributed to various small molecule drug discovery projects with experience in target validation, screening and hit-to-lead stages.

Specializing in high-content image analysis, Simon has supervised screens and developed novel assays for a variety of therapeutic targets in oncology. His postdoctoral career was spent at The Institute of Cancer Research and the UCL Cancer Institute in London, then more recently with the MRC Cancer Unit in Cambridge.

Jackline Agwenge

Jackline Agwenge is a highly-skilled research scientist with a Masters degree in Molecular Bioscience (Medical) from the University of Bath. Her main research area involved studying the biology of tumours with a focus on establishing the role of transcription factors YAP and TAZ (WWTR1) in the cell cycle and their influence in promoting the proliferation of triple negative breast cancers. She is passionate about overall cancer research and the strides made in understanding the complexity of the human body.

She has previously worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention site in Kenya where she was involved in a Zika serosurveillance study following the 2015-16 Zika outbreak, where she isolated and propagated the wildtype Zika virus and the lab strain Dengue II Chimerivax for downstream PCR, MAC ELISA and confirmatory plaque reduction neutralisation tests. Epidemiological surveillance of acute febrile illnesses in endemic regions involving whole genome isolation from human whole blood samples for diagnostic PCR testing and an antimicrobial resistance study identifying mutations that conferred resistance to identified pathogenic bacteria.

Nishank Shah

Nishank Shah is the director of Duro Green which specialises in decentralised solutions for municipal solid waste management. Duro Green has been operating in Ahmedabad and Surat providing automatic machines and an end to end solution from awareness to project execution. Nishank and his company have also been supported by the government of Gujarat and have received a grant for R&D in product designing.

Nishank has a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA in Family Business Management from Entrepreneurship Development Institute.

Nitin Nayar

Nitin launched Filter Capital India in 2018 specialising in growth investments opportunities in technology including Internet, e-commerce, software, IT, payments, logistics, education and health. Nitin was a Managing Director at the affiliate of the US-based global investment firm Warburg Pincus LLC where he worked for 14 years.

Nitin is a graduate of the Harvard Business School. He is currently a Member Board Trustee in SNEHA which is a non-profit organization that works with women, children, public health and safety systems.

Jeff Roix

Jeff is the CEO of Stingray Bio, a biotech company headquartered in Sussex UK, focused on the discovery and development of novel small molecule cancer therapeutics. He also serves as a director on the board of Opal Therapeutics.

Jeff is a scientist and biotech entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in discovering medicines. He was also the founder and CEO of NeoPhore Ltd, a UK based cancer immunotherapy biotech. Prior to that, he worked as COO at PhoreMost, a Cambridge University spin-out. He got his bachelor’s from the Harvard Extension School.

Neha Mehta

Neha Mehta is an Indian television actress. She is best known for her role as Anjali Taarak Mehta in India’s longest-running sitcom TV serial “Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah”. Neha ancestrally belongs to Patan, Gujarat, but was brought up in Vadodara and Ahmedabad. She comes from a family that has deep roots in Gujarati literature and she herself is a Gujarati
speaker. Her interests include dancing and reading books.

She started her television career with Dollar Bahu in 2001 and has worked in two Gujarati and one Hindi films in her acting career. She was awarded “Glory of Gujarat Award” and “Indian Television Academy Award” in 2013.

Neha has a Master’s degree in Performing Arts (MPA), in Indian Classical Dance, and a Diploma in Vocal and Drama.

Cecilia Oldne

Cecilia is a Business Advisor and Brand Strategist and works with companies in the food and beverage industry. She also holds partner and ambassadorial roles across a spectrum of industrial, governmental and social organisations. She is a Partner in Amphora Portfolio Managment - London’s leading Fine Wine Investment Firm.

Cecilia was instrumental in the success of Sula Vineyards as the Head of Marketing in which she curated SulaFest - one of India’s most awaited music festivals. She is also the Brand Ambassador for Sweden-India Business Council, a network for growing business between Sweden and India.

Dr. Gauri Bharat

Gauri is an Associate Professor and Head of the Architectural History and Theory Program at CEPT University. Her broad interest in both research and teaching is on how people engage with and are shaped by built environments. Gauri has a PhD from the University of East Anglia and MA Arch. from National University of Singapore.

She has also won the International Book Prize for Best Humanities PhD Dissertation at the International Convention for Asian Scholars in 2017 for her recently published book 'In Forest, Field, and Factory - Adivasi Habitations Through Twentieth Century India.

Chris Heron

Chris is the CEO of Visibly which is an o2h technology company. He is a degree educated designer from Cambridge UK. He spent much of his early career in the talent and HR industries before moving into brand marketing. Over the last few years Chris has focused solely on Visibly, an exciting new employee social media advocacy platform catering to Marketing and Human Resources professionals.

Visibly is created to take employee advocacy to the next new level, asking employees to not just share brand content, but directly participate in the brand building exercise. We have put the whole creative process into the hands of the employees themselves.

Renu Pokharna

Renu Pokharna is the founder of The Ahmedabad Project. She has a decade-long experience working in public policy and development across India, Africa, and the USA. Her stints include serving as a Chief Minister’s Fellow with the Government of Gujarat and working in Uganda, Africa with an educational startup.

Her work has also been published in Wall Street Journal and other national newspapers. Her interests include yoga and travel, she has done solo trips across 5 out of 7 continents so far. Renu has a degree in Public Policy from Columbia University.

Dr. Savan Godiawala

Savan is a Senior Director at Deloitte India and leads the process industry in the corporate finance India team and also a part of Deloitte Global Chemical Affinity Group. He is also a visiting faculty at IIM-A. He has 23 years of advisory experience covering investment banking, restructuring, M&A, business valuation, and due diligence, serving large national and
multinational clients across industries. Savan is an angel investor and mentor to many startups.

He has also co-authored a book on ‘Business Taxation’ published by McGraw Hill. Savan is a Chartered Accountant and has a Ph.D. in management from Nirma University.

Mark Slaski

Dr. Mark Slaski is the Chief Psychologist with Workplace Buzz and is a leading expert in the field of engagement on which he has published a number of articles. He is also a senior lecturer in Organisational Psychology. He believes ‘a culture of high engagement equals superior performance, an increased sense of belonging and well-being’.

Mark has worked across the globe advising executives on aligning people, business and culture. His greatest asset is his insight into human psychology. Mark is also the author of Equaliser; a globally used online survey and toolkit designed to transform workplace engagement.

Anjali Desai

Anjali is an educationist, grassroots community facilitator, and an author. In 2003, she ran a rural design school with partner NGO Gramshree to empower women artisans. She also helped establish Seva Cafe, a gift Economy experiment that has inspired similar experiments worldwide. In 2005, Anjali founded Patangyu, an alternative hands-on education initiative for children.

Anjali has also been an active cornerstone in rethinking and strengthening Manav Sadha’s value-based education program, serving children across several of Ahmedabad’s low-income communities. She graduated from the University of Texas, Austin.