Vijay Chandru, Ph.D.

Dr. Vijay Chandru (PhD, MIT 1982) is an academic entrepreneur named as a “Technology Pioneer” by World Economic Forum in 2006. Chandru is founder of Strand Life Sciences (www.strandls.com) 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.

Dr. V. Anantha-Nageswaran

Anantha-Nageswaran graduated with a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management (MBA) from the internationally reputed Indian Institute of Management (IIM) at Ahmedabad in 1985. He obtained a doctoral degree in Finance from the University of Massachusetts in 1994 for his work on the empirical behaviour of exchange rates.

Between 1994 and 2004, he worked for Union Bank of Switzerland (now UBS) and Credit Suisse in Switzerland as a Currency Economist and as the Regional Head for Investment Advisory for private clients of Credit Suisse in Singapore. In July 2006, he joined Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd. in Singapore as the Head of Research for Asia. In March 2009, he was appointed as the Chief Investment Officer for the bank. Since July 2011, he has been an independent consultant.

He co-founded Takshashila Institution – a networked public policy think-tank and education institution in 2009. He is the Fellow for Global Economics at the Takshashila Institution. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF India), located in New Delhi. He co-founded the Aavishkaar India Micro Venture Capital Fund in 2002. Today, Aavishkaar is a reputed Investment Fund for social enterprises investment in emerging economies. He was an angel investor in several socially relevant enterprises.

He teaches International Economics and Financial markets to graduate students at the Singapore Management University, at IIM, Bangalore and at the Great Lakes Institute of Management in Chennai.

His weekly column on international economics and financial markets has been appearing on Tuesdays for the last seven and half years in MINT, India’s reputed financial daily. The Institute of Certified Financial Analysts of India (ICFAI) published an edited collection of his articles that appeared in ‘Business Line’ between 1999 and 2004. In the last two decades, he has written extensively for other financial dailies in India (Economic Times, Financial Express and Business Line) and publications such as ‘The Edge’ and ‘Asia Inc.’ in Asia and ‘Central European’ (a ‘Euromoney’ publication). His views are regularly sought by international television networks – Bloomberg, Reuters and CNBC.

Karuna Jain

Karuna joined Acumen in July 2012 to grow & manage the healthcare portfolio and also to develop the affordable housing portfolio in India. Prior to this, Karuna has 2 years of investing experience with the $175mn Aditya Birla private equity fund and $600mn Milestone Capital real estate fund. She has also spent 4 years with the Aditya Birla Group and Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories in textiles, cement and pharmaceuticals businesses across finance and M&A roles. Karuna earned her post graduation in management from the India School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad. She is also a qualified Chartered Accountant.

Rajiv Vasudevan

Rajiv Vasudevan, Founder & Managing Director of AyurVAID, is responsible for providing leadership and operational excellence to all aspects of the business.

He has worked in a diverse set of leadership roles in the private and government sectors including operations as well as profit center management roles at Godrej and Motorola (Country Head, PSG, India & SAARC). He also served the Government of Kerala as CEO-Technopark, Director-Kerala State IT Mission, and later as Special Officer – Biotechnology.

Rajiv holds a B.Tech (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Calicut (1984) and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (1987). He qualified as an ‘assessor’ of the National Board for Accreditation for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH), Quality Council of India in 2007, making him the first person from the Ayurveda sector to receive this accreditation. Further, Rajiv is a member of the technical committee constituted by the Government of India for formulation of NABH accreditation standards for Ayurveda hospitals.

He has served on the Board of Directors of State Bank of India, Kerala LHO, and is currently a member of the Board of Governors of his alma mater, NIT-Calicut.

Ammini Vasudevan

Ammini Vasudevan is a founding director of AyurVAID. A graduate in botany and a talented vocal and instrumental artist in Indian classical music, Ammini Vasudevan has contributed to the company in imbuing patient-centric core values that has shaped AyurVAID’s organisational culture to be relentlessly focused on serving our patients better.