Sunil Shah
Managing Partner, Therapeutics
Sunil's Biography
Sunil Shah
Managing Partner, Therapeutics
o2h Ventures was co-founded by Sunil and Prashant Shah in 2013. In the last 3-4 years, they have co-founded four companies with UK-based academics and entrepreneurs, provided consultancy services to five companies, held Chairman or Director level positions in nine companies, built up a portfolio of twenty early-stage investments, and executed early-stage drug discovery research projects for fifteen different companies. In 2013, bucking a pattern of UK Science going to the USA for funding, Sunil and Prashant acted quickly to lead an academic spin-out from the USA with promising data in brain cancer and proceeded to run, externally fund and locate that company, Opal Oncology, in the UK. It provided direct hands-on experience of making the scientific decisions and managing the operations of a therapeutics company.
Prashant Shah
Managing Partner, AI
Prashant's Biography
Prashant Shah
Managing Partner, AI
o2h Ventures was co-founded by Sunil and Prashant Shah in 2013. In the last 3-4 years, they have co-founded four companies with UK-based academics and entrepreneurs, provided consultancy services to five companies, held Chairman or Director level positions in nine companies, built up a portfolio of twenty early-stage investments, and executed early-stage drug discovery research projects for fifteen different companies. In 2013, bucking a pattern of UK Science going to the USA for funding, Sunil and Prashant acted quickly to lead an academic spin out from the USA with promising data in brain cancer and proceeded to run, externally fund and locate that company, Opal Oncology, in the UK. It provided direct hands-on experience of making the scientific decisions and managing the operations of a therapeutics company.
Andy Morley
Principal
Andy's Biography
Andy Morley
Principal
Andy is a Medicinal Chemist with over 25 yrs working in major pharma (Sano -Aventis, AZ). He has experience across all discovery phases, having supported five candidates into the clinic. He has authored and inventor of over 55 publications and patents. He is been working full-time with o2h Ventures since 2013 to lead the scientific evaluation of the investments and also provides scientific support on key projects within the portfolio. He is the CSO of Opal Oncology and had been CSO for two o2h early-stage collaborations.
Tim Sharman
Compliance Officer
Tim Sharman
Compliance Officer
Tim is the Compliance Officer and Money Laundering Reporting Officer for o2h Ventures.
He graduated from the University of Kent, Canterbury with an MA in the History and Philosophy of Science in 1986.
He has over 27 years experience in the financial services industry, in compliance, operational and investment management roles. In the last 15 years, Tim has specialised in the alternative investments sector.
He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investment.
Tejas Upadhyay
Deal Flow Manager
Tejas's Biography
Tejas Upadhyay
Deal Flow Manager
A chemist with a passion for drug discovery and programme management. >17 years of experience working with various research organisation like Alembic, Evotec, o2h and Piramal. He gained his PhD from India and post-doctoral experience from Glasgow University, UK. Tejas visits many of the biotech conferences, pitching events, tech transfer offices as well as managing live working relationships with biotech companies to find discovery opportunities to evaluate.
Nehal Kotadiya
Fund Administrator
Nehal's Biography
Nehal Kotadiya
Fund Administrator
A dynamic MBA finance professional with 2 years of experience in the areas of Cash flow & Fund flow management, Statutory filings, Financial analysis, Payroll management, Taxation & Accounting. Nehal is an extremely responsible fund administrator and has been actively looking after protecting interest of investors at o2h Ventures by keeping a keen eye on fund performance, investment areas, ROI and other related spheres.
Archa Khandelwal
On Boarding Manager
Archa's Biography
Archa Khandelwal
On Boarding Manager
Archa is associated with o2h for over 3 years now. She is one of the most valuable resources of o2h and plays the crucial role of onboarding manager in o2h ventures by profusely guiding investors to smoothly get along with the investment processes and other necessary formalities. Archa has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering She is the core member of o2h technology products including Visibly and Chemistry in the Cloud.
Ajit Singh Guller
Digital Marketing Manager
Ajit's Biography
Ajit Singh Guller
Digital Marketing Manager
Ajit has got collective experience of over 3 years in Digital Marketing and related areas. He oversees all the digital marketing aspects of o2h group and is in the quest of increasing digital footprints of o2h in the upcoming years. Ajit has Bachelor’s degree in Commerce and heads offline as well as digital marketing at o2h Ventures in order to make it hassle-free for investors to interact and invest; and for the target audience to know more about o2h Ventures and the S/EIS Fund.
Catherine Beech
Independent Representative to the Investment Advisory Panel
Catherine Beech Biography
Catherine Beech
Independent Representative to the Investment Advisory Panel
Catherine has over 25 years
of experience in biotech,
pharmaceutical and as a venture
investor. She is currently the CEO
of Exonate for which she was one
of the founders leading the spin-
out from Nottingham University.
Catherine has a degree in medicine
from Birmingham University and in 2008 was awarded the OBE for services to technology and innovation.
Dr Chris Torrance
Independent Representative of the Investment Advisory Panel
Dr Chris Torrance Biography
Dr Chris Torrance
Independent Representative of the Investment Advisory Panel
Chris is a cancer researcher and entrepreneur. In 2007 he founded Horizon Discovery to translate advances in human genome editing into a range of research tools and services to accelerate the discovery of new and improved ‘Personalized Medicines’, including the identi cation of novel drug targets for pharmaceutical development. By 2014 Chris and his colleagues had built Horizon into the fastest growing Biotech company in the UK. In the same year, the company listed on the London Stock Exchange with over 100 commercial and scienti c staff and signi cant deal- ow with the pharmaceutical Industry, for which Horizon received the Queens Award for International Trade in 2012. Chris completed his post-doctoral training in the laboratory of Professor Bert Vogelstein at the Johns Hopkins University (U.S.A).
Cengiz Tarhan
Independent Representative of the Investment Advisory Panel
Cengiz Tarhan Biography
Cengiz Tarhan
Independent Representative of the Investment Advisory Panel
Cengiz set up FreeMedic PLC in
1993 which he grew over 25 years
and is now known as UCL Business
PLC, one of the most proli c and
successful technology groups in the
UK serving UCL and its associated
partner hospitals. Over those years
Cengiz was directly involved in
many licenses and spinouts including PolyMASC Pharmaceuticals PLC, one of the rst university spin-outs to oat on the London AIM in 1995, Medic to Medic Ltd which was sold to Informa PLC in 2005 and Stanmore Implants Worldwide Limited which was acquired by Abingworth
and MDY Healthcare in February 2008. More recently UCLB has been at the vanguard of creating the most promising cancer and gene therapy biotechs in the UK including three.
W. Graham Richards
Independent Representative of the Investment Advisory Panel
W. Graham Richards Biography
W. Graham Richards
Independent Representative of the Investment Advisory Panel
Graham served as Chairman of
the Department of Chemistry at
Oxford University. Throughout his
career, he has been involved in the
commercialisation of technologies
where he was a director of the
University of Oxford’s technology
transfer company. He was also
involved with the Wellcome Trust in a similar capacity. He co-founded Oxford Molecular Group plc., InhibOx Ltd. and Oxford Drug Design Ltd. He was a main board director, now venture partner, of IP Group plc., the listed intellectual property commercialisation company.
R G Boyle
Venture Partner
Robert's Biography
R G Boyle
Venture Partner
R G Boyle is a founder and the CEO of Sentinel Oncology Ltd, a company dedicated towards the discovery of novel small molecules for the treatment of unmet medical needs. Robert is a medicinal chemist by background with over twenty-five years’ industrial experience. He has held positions at Pfizer (1993-1997); Cambridge Discovery Chemistry (1997-2000); Millennium Pharmaceuticals (200-2003); Astex Therapeutics (2003-2005) & Sentinel Oncology (2005-present). As CEO & founder of Sentinel Oncology, he has successfully raised multiple rounds of funding, built a pipeline of small molecule drug assets and secured multiple licensing deals with Biotech and Pharma. Sentinel has been the recipient of numerous awards & grants for innovation and Robert is a named inventor on over 50 patents & publications describing the discovery and use of small molecules for the treatment of unmet medical needs.
Dr Nigel Pitchford
Venture Partner
Dr Nigel Pitchford
Venture Partner
Nigel is the CEO of Ieso Digital Health Limited - the world leading digital health company specialising in evidence-based online Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Prior to joining Ieso he was the Chief Investment Officer for Touchstone Innovations plc and was responsible for all of the Group's investment activities, which were concentrated on UK-based start-ups in the Healthcare and Technology sectors. During his tenure, the active venture portfolio grew to some 50 companies with corresponding value growth in excess of £350m. Previously he had been a partner at DFJ Esprit and 3i and was an active investor across Europe and the US. His previous investments include Domantis (sold to GSK), Arakis (sold to Sosei Pharma), Apatech (sold to Baxter), Endosense (sold to St Jude), EUSA Pharma (sold to Jazz), Horizon Discovery (AIM: HZD) and Oxford Immunotec (NASDAQ: OXFD).
Chris Reid
Venture Partner
Chris's Biography
Chris Reid
Venture Partner
Chris Reid worked in the City for 17 years as a successful equity research analyst and a fund manager. Amongst other achievements, he built a UK Income fund from scratch to be one of the best performing funds in the sector (150% total return in six years) with over £1bn AUM. Prior to joining the City, he spent 6 years as a Technology Consultant at PA Consultants, focusing on evaluation and support of new products and businesses. He has first-hand experience of over 200 businesses in all industries from mining to high-technology manufacturing across the UK, US and Europe and a deep understanding of the financial, strategic and operational factors that must all come together to ensure a successful, financially rewarding investment. He has a Cambridge MA in Natural Sciences (Materials Science) and an MBA from London Business School.
Sam Tully
Venture Partner
Sam's Biography
Sam Tully
Venture Partner
Sam is a graduate of Robinson College Cambridge, a PWC qualified Chartered Accountant and an investment banking veteran with 25 years of experience in Equities and other advisory roles. He has worked at Robert/Jardine Fleming, JP Morgan, Cazenove, UBS, Seymour Pierce, Standard Chartered and most recently Credit Suisse. He has a track record of successful public and private fund raising and has built up an extensive set of deep institutional relationships in the UK and Asia.
