Sunil Shah
CEO - o2h Ventures and Co-Founder - o2h discovery
Sunil's Biography
Sunil Shah
CEO - o2h Ventures and Co-Founder - o2h discovery
A serial entrepreneur having begun a career in the Life Sciences team at PA Consulting group followed by co-founding two companies in the information technology and life sciences sector. The second of these companies, Oxygen Healthcare Ltd was acquired by Piramal Enterprises Ltd (BSE: PEL). Sunil co-founded o2h ventures which involves discovery services / collaborations, seeding drug discovery, academic in-licensing and biotechnology incubation. Sunil has a degree in Biochemistry and an MBA from Cambridge University
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Prashant Shah
CEO - o2h discovery and Co-Founder - o2h group
Prashant's Biography
Prashant Shah
CEO - o2h discovery and Co-Founder - o2h group
Prashant is a serial entrepreneur in life sciences and tech in which one of those companies was acquired by a public company. He is currently active in seed investing (a portfolio of ~50 companies), product/IP development, services, and building lab/office infrastructure. The early career was with the Strategy group at Accenture. He has a BEng, an MSc, in which he worked on the Human Genome Program at the Sanger Centre, and an MPhil in Management from the Judge Institute. Prashant is also a General Partner in the o2h SEIS/EIS Human Health Funds.
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Andy Morley
Chief Scientific Officer
Andy's Biography
Andy Morley
Chief Scientific Officer
Andy is the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at o2h Discovery. He also leads scientific evaluations for investments and provides strategic scientific support across key portfolio projects for o2h Ventures. With over 25 years of experience as a Medicinal Chemist, Andy has worked with major pharmaceutical companies, including Sanofi-Aventis and AstraZeneca. He has contributed across all phases of drug discovery and has played a key role in advancing five candidates into clinical trials. Andy is also the author and inventor of over 55 publications and patents.
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Nilesh Dagia
Chief Special Projects Officer
Nilesh's Biography
Nilesh Dagia
Chief Special Projects Officer
Nilesh leads the global operations of o2h group covering a wide range of innovation led investment, life-science and technology businesses. He is also overseeing the development and execution of the new o2h discovery Shirish Research Centre in Ahmedabad, India. Prior to joining o2h group, Nilesh worked with Piramal Group in various capacities including as an Alliance Manager for a risk-share oncology-based collaboration with a US Big Pharma and has also worked as the Head of Biology in Piramal Discovery solutions. Nilesh obtained his Ph.D. from Ohio University and completed a post-doc in Immunology, Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is the author and inventor of >30 life science patents and publications. He received the Young Scientist of India award from OPPI in 2010.
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David Davies
Head of Medicinal Chemistry
David's Biography
David Davies
Head of Medicinal Chemistry
David Davies has 25 years of experience in medicinal chemistry within the pharmaceutical industry with a focus on the antibacterial area (clavulanates, penicillinates, pseudomonates and bacterial topoisomerase inhibitors). He previously worked at GSK and currently holds a part-time academic position at University College London (UCL). He served as the Head of Medicinal Chemistry at Antabio for nearly a decade, specialising in antibacterial research, and has extensive experience managing chemistry projects in multiple countries including France, UK, India and China. He is the inventor of 40 patents and has authored 37 publications.
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Claudio Dagostin
Vice President - Business Development (UK & Europe)
Claudio's Biography
Claudio Dagostin
Vice President - Business Development (UK & Europe)
Claudio obtained his PhD in Chemistry (Mechanisms of Organic Reactions) from the University of Rome in 2000. He went for a post-doc at Imperial College London where he worked on Alzheimer’s disease chemical probes. In 2004, he started working in several companies in the Cambridge biotech cluster where he deepened his knowledge in Medicinal Chemistry and in Fragment Based Drug Design. In 2012, he went back to academia at Cambridge University where he investigated challenging drug targets such as protein-protein interactions. He also co-founded the Entrepreneurial Postdocs of Cambridge (EPOC) society in 2015 to support postdocs in their pursuit of entrepreneurial careers. In 2017, joined Capital Cell with a role in Business Development, then Abzena in Cambridge and finally o2h in January 2021.
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Catherine Stace (PhD MBA)
Vice President - Business Development (East Coast USA) & Strategic Relationship
Cat's Biography
Catherine Stace (PhD MBA)
Vice President - Business Development (East Coast USA) & Strategic Relationship
Catherine holds over 18 years of post-doctoral experience in therapeutic discovery, with strategic roles in biotechnology, consultancy, and CRO organizations. She has contributed to small molecule therapeutics, peptides, health tech, and engineering. She started her career at Isogenica and Bicycle Therapeutics, establishing therapeutic platforms and discovery programs. She has also consulted for various biotech and health tech start-ups to develop platform technologies at the intersection of biology and engineering. Before joining o2h, she was EVP of Business Development at Domainex, collaborating with companies in the UK, USA, and Europe.
She has completed an MSc in Biochemistry from Nottingham, a PhD in Cell Biology from Cambridge, and an MBA from the Open University.
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Tejas Upadhyay
Vice President - Business Development (USA)
Tejas's Biography
Tejas Upadhyay
Vice President - Business Development (USA)
Tejas holds a master’s degree from Gujarat University, earned his PhD in India, and gained valuable post-doctoral experience at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom. His professional journey commenced at Alembic, and he has since contributed his expertise to several contract research organisations, including Evotec, o2h, and Piramal. Currently, he oversees all projects in the USA region. With a background in chemistry, he boasts over two decades of experience in the field of preclinical drug discovery.
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Gayathri Sadasivam
Vice President - Biology
Gayathri's Biography
Gayathri Sadasivam
Vice President - Biology
Gayathri leads the biology capabilities in Ahmedabad, India and Cambridge, UK. She also significantly contributes to the business development with the o2h customers world-wide, understanding the market requirements, contributing to technology transfer and investment evaluations. Prior to this, she has worked for more than 2 decades in different therapeutic areas in both industry and academia. She has led multiple programs in drug discovery projects through lead optimization to candidate selection and further development to late stage clinical trials. She has worked in a multi-disciplinary environment, leading chemical biology efforts creating chemical tools that modulate novel class of “undruggable” targets. Gayathri has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Brain Research Institute, Zurich, Switzerland.
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Hemal Soni
Vice President - Chemistry
Hemal's Biography
Hemal Soni
Vice President - Chemistry
Hemal has comprehensive experience in leading & guiding multi-FTE synthetic chemistry research and development collaborations which are in support of the fast-paced drug discovery programs. At o2h discovery, he oversees the progress and troubleshooting of all the ongoing projects and helps with evaluation as well as kick start of new programs.
Hemal obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Kadi Sarva University, Gujarat. He has >17 years of industrial experience. Prior to joining o2h discovery, Hemal worked with Piramal Discovery Solutions (PDS) for 4 years during which he led the largest project covering 42 FTEs for a UK-based collaborator. He has worked with clients all around the world including UK, USA, Japan, Australia, Singapore and more.
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Dharmesh Bhatt
Head - Business Development (India)
Dharmesh's Biography
Dharmesh Bhatt
Head - Business Development (India)
Dharmesh obtained his master’s degree in chemistry from M.K University and has done an MBA in Industrial Management from National Institute of Management. He has about 27 years of industrial experience during which he has served in many MNCs like Zydus Cadila, Piramal, Dishman Pharma, Daicel etc. He has immense expertise in the purification, isolation & characterization of heterocyclic, macrocyclic, natural products, etc. Dharmesh was also in role of Sales & BD for analytical services, pharma impurity standard, separation services & column business for domestic market.
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Dr. Andy Richards
Advisory Board Member
Dr. Andy's Biography
Dr. Andy Richards
Advisory Board Member
Dr. Rashmi Barbhaiya
Advisory Board Member
Dr. Rashmi's Biography
Simon Stockwell
Senior Scientist II
Simon's Biography
Simon Stockwell
Senior Scientist II
Simon is a senior 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 UCL Institute in London, then more recently with the MRC Cancer Unit in Cambridge.
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Rajesh Yesodharan
Senior Research Scientist - II
Rajesh's Biography
Rajesh Yesodharan
Senior Research Scientist - II
Rajesh is an invitro biologist with over 17 years of experience in drug discovery research and services in CRO and Pharmaceutical industries. He holds a Master’s degree in Biotechnology and a postgraduate diploma in Regulatory Affairs. He oversaw the high-throughput screening and electrophysiology (Patch clamp) labs at Lupin Ltd. He was instrumental in the development of in vitro biochemical and cell-based assays as well as the screening of small compounds against a variety of targets, including Ion channels, GPCRs, and Enzymes.. Before joining o2h, he worked for Jubilant Biosys Ltd and Lupin Ltd. He was a part of the novel drug discovery programmes at Lupin Ltd., where the two lead molecules have now been out-licenced to AbbVie and Boehringer Ingelheim.
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Pragnesh Thakkar
Head - Finance & SCM
Pragnesh's Biography
Pragnesh Thakkar
Head - Finance & SCM
Mr. Pragnesh Thakkar serves as the Finance Manager of o2h Group for 13+ years. He also heads Accounting, Financials, Secretarial functions of the company. Well versed in Accounting, Financial reporting, MIS and Taxation. He has a degree of Master in Commerce and has total 15 year of industrial work experience.
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Bhargavi Jansari
Senior Manager - Operations
Bhargavi's Biography
Bhargavi Jansari
Senior Manager - Operations
Bhargavi is an accomplished professional with over a decade of experience in the field of human resource management, holding an MBA in HR. Her expertise encompasses leadership development, shaping organisational culture and values, designing KRAs and performance evaluation systems, talent development and related functions.
As a Senior Manager – Operations, she oversees HR, Environmental Health and Safety (EHS), Information and Communication Technology (ICT), and Engineering, providing critical support and guidance in these areas.
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Neetusingh Sengar
Manager - Human Resource
Neetusingh's Biography
Neetusingh Sengar
Manager - Human Resource
Neetu is a passionate HR professional with over six years of experience. She has been an integral part of the HR team at the o2h group for a few years now, and she has contributed significantly to various HR functions ranging from talent acquisition to resource planning and forecasting.
Neetu holds a postgraduate degree in Electronics and Communication from Sardar Patel University and a postgraduate diploma in HRM from Mahatma Gandhi Labour Institute. On days when she is not scouting talent for o2h group, you will find her experimenting with different cuisines in the kitchen, enjoying music and reading books.
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Tammy Ward
Head of Design
Tammy's Biography
Tammy Ward
Head of Design
Tammy is a senior digital creative having 16+ years of experience in designing. She has a passion for producing engaging and effective user experiences and bringing digital marketing campaigns to life.
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Ajit Singh Guller
Head - Marketing
Ajit's Biography
Ajit Singh Guller
Head - Marketing
As the Head of Marketing at the o2h group, Ajit assumes a leadership role, overseeing a team of talented marketing and BD ops professionals dedicated to enhancing the company’s brand presence. Ajit’s responsibilities encompass brand marketing, advertising and research, content and digital marketing, business analytics, as well as public relations and communications.
Before joining the o2h group, Ajit worked with two SME tech companies serving global clients, and a seed stage e-commerce startup. He brings a wealth of experience to the table, with a keen focus on design, user experience, behavior analysis, and digital analytics.
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