Chairman, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Vijay Chandru (PhD, MIT 1982) is an academic entrepreneur named as the "Technology Pioneer" by World Economic Forum in 2006. Chandru is founder of Strand Life Sciences and currently serves as its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Chandru's academic career has spanned over two decades at Purdue University and the Indian Institute of Science.

Chandru is the recipient of several awards and honors: Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences (1996), MCIT Dewang Mehta Award for Innovation in IT (2001), UGC Hari Om Trust award for "Science and Society" (2003), the President's Medal of INFORMS in 2006, distinguished Alumni award by the MIT India Program in 2007, and was recognized as the Biospectrum Biotech Entrepreneur of 2007.

Chandru is the elected President (2009-2012) of Association of Biotech led Enterprises (ABLE), the apex trade body representing the Indian Biotech industry.

West Bridge Capital Partners 

Naresh Malhotra is an Operating Partner with Sequoia Capital India/ West Bridge Capital Partners. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital India, Naresh was the CEO of Caf Coffee Day. Earlier, Naresh worked with ICI, Unilever Group, and Colgate Palmolive in India and overseas. He was a President and a member of the Supervisory Board of the UB Group, Bangalore. Naresh was a Founding Partner of KPMG, India and was also a Managing Director of Corporate Finance and a Practice Leader of the Real Estate, Hospitality and Retail businesses. In addition to Finance, Naresh worked in marketing and numerous start-up operations. In early 2000, he joined GIV Management, a U.S. private equity firm, as General Partner and Managing Director in Bangalore.

Naresh is a Chartered Accountant and holds a B. Com. from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata University.

Managing Director and CEO, UTI Venture Funds Management Company Limited

Raja founded UTI Ventures in the Year 2000. He has played a pivotal role in building an experienced management team and forging significant LP relationships for the firm. He brings over two decades of experience and an impressive network in Indian capital markets. Raja leads the firm's fund raising efforts and guides the team in concluding investments and facilitating exits. He actively works with entrepreneurs and represents our funds on the boards of several portfolio companies. Raja also served as Executive Director of UTI Mutual Fund, one of India's largest mutual fund houses. Prior to founding UTI Ventures, Raja was Regional Director of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI - India's capital market regulator) and also served as Director of five Indian Stock Exchanges. Earlier, Raja was a senior officer in the Indian Civil Services.

He holds a Masters degree and an M Phil in Science and is a graduate of the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.

Co- Founder, Director & Chief Technology Officer

Ramesh has research interests in Sequence Analysis, String Algorithms, Computational Biology, Computational Geometry and Foundations of Computing. Ramesh has been a visiting fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Saarbrucken, Courant Institute, NYU, and HKUST in Hong Kong. He has been teaching at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore for the past 6 years.

President & CEO-MediBIC Group, President-MediBIC Pharma, President-Asia Private Equity Capital, Executive Director-Site Quality Co. Ltd

Dr. Hashimoto is a graduate of Osaka University Medical School. Following his postdoctoral research at Harvard University Medical School, he became an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also experienced Senior Director of the Institute of Immunology, Syntex, Japan, Director Biotechnology, Department of Roche (US) and Director of Molecular Biology Department for the Tsukuba Laboratory of Nippon Glaxo Ltd (currently GlaxoSmithKline K.K.). During Nippon Glaxo, he was involved in PGx project planning.

In 2000, he founded MediBIC and is the President and CEO of the company. He is also on the board of several Asian biotech companies, serving as the Board of Directors.