Our Founders and Senior Partners

The People Who Make Up Our Collective

Based at IIM-Mumbai, our collective brings together clinicians, scientists and finance experts who work across the healthcare value chain.

Our Managing Partners

Dr. Saranya Manickaraj

Dr. Saranya Manickaraj

VP Clinical Affairs and People Resources
Hover to flip

Dr. Saranya Manickaraj

VP Clinical Affairs and People Resources

Saranya holds an MD in paediatrics with a fellowship in neonatal paediatrics from Canada, and has spent more than fifteen years in tertiary neonatal intensive care. She is National Coordinator for the National Neonatology Forum's Neonatal Resuscitation Program and founder of Madhuram Lactation, and covers maternal, child and neonatal service line economics, where clinical staffing ratios drive the margin more than volume does.

Paediatrics Neonatal Care Maternal Health
Dr. Megana Surapaneni

Dr. Megana Surapaneni

VP Marketing, Sales & Business Development
Hover to flip

Dr. Megana Surapaneni

VP Marketing, Sales & Business Development

Megana is a diabetologist (FIDM, Medvarsity/Apollo) who leads Marketing, Sales & Business Development for us, taking our clinical service lines into tier 2 and tier 3 markets. She has built mobile mini-hospitals that take healthcare to the last mile of rural health, and actively takes charge of public healthcare deployment on the ground.

Rural Health Community Medicine Diabetology
Dr. Sandhya Popuri

Dr. Sandhya Popuri

VP Customer Success, Internal Processes & QA
Hover to flip

Dr. Sandhya Popuri

VP Customer Success, Internal Processes & QA

Sandhya is an MD Ophthal and builds process audit and quality frameworks to NABH standard. On engagements she owns clinical quality, standard operating procedures, management information systems and accreditation readiness, and co-authored our intelligence brief on India's eye care market.

Ophthalmology Rare Diseases Home-based Care
Dr. Kiran Melkote

Dr. Kiran Melkote

VP Strategy, Growth and Legal
Hover to flip

Dr. Kiran Melkote

VP Strategy, Growth and Legal

Kiran has spent twenty years in orthopaedic practice at MSRMC and serves as a director of AHRER, graduating valedictorian of his ISB cohort. He carries our work on commercial structure, health policy and regulatory readiness, publishing on CDSCO and NPPA regulatory design, CGHS provider financing and universal health coverage, and drawing on both the operating theatre and the policy table.

Orthopaedics Medical Devices Public Health Policy Growth Strategy
Dr. Rohan Chaubal

Dr. Rohan Chaubal

VP Innovations, Partnerships and Product Development
Hover to flip

Dr. Rohan Chaubal

VP Innovations, Partnerships and Product Development

Rohan is a PhD in Healthcare from the Dept. of Surgical Oncology at the Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai. He has led large scale clinical trials impacting national healthcare outcomes, established clinical genomics for oncology in India, and leads our vertical on AI/ML multimodal data integration for healthcare, clinical diagnostics and drug development. Across fourteen years he has combined that background with NISM-certified finance training, which is why he leads our investor representation and service line economics work.

Molecular Diagnostics Oncology AI/ML Capital Strategy
Dr. Obuli Ramchandran

Dr. Obuli Ramchandran

VP Data, Operations and Supply Chain
Hover to flip

Dr. Obuli Ramchandran

VP Data, Operations and Supply Chain

Obuli is a vitreoretinal surgeon at Centre for Sight, New Delhi, who trained at AIIMS and holds MRCS Edinburgh and FAICO Retina, with more than four thousand surgeries behind him. He completed the ISB cohort on the Dean’s List, publishes health economics research on AI-assisted diabetic retinopathy screening, and leads our work on throughput, theatre utilisation, occupancy and length of stay.

Vitreoretinal Surgery AI in Healthcare Health Economics
Lt. Col. Siddarth Wather

Lt. Col. Siddarth Wather

VP Government Affairs, CSR & Finance
Hover to flip

Lt. Col. Siddarth Wather

VP Government Affairs, CSR & Finance

Siddarth served on distinguished missions with the United Nations in peacekeeping and in the Indian Army before becoming Chief Financial Advisor to AIIMS Rishikesh. He pairs that field experience with formal training at ISB in healthcare management, at Grant Thornton in CSR, and at IIM Lucknow in supply chain management. That institutional background anchors our work on government contracts, policy, procurement and CSR-funded public health programmes.

CSR Funding Government Affairs Industry Outreach

Our Senior Partners

Karthik Sharma (BA LLB)

Karthik Sharma (BA LLB)

Manager Securities, Finance & Legal
Hover to flip

Karthik Sharma (BA LLB)

Manager Securities, Finance & Legal

Karthik holds the NISM Series X-B Investment Adviser certification, with financial markets training that underpins our securities, finance and legal advisory work.

Securities Finance Legal

Jerishma Jayasenan(BA LLB)

Corporate & Finance Law
Hover to flip

Jerishma Jayasenan(BA LLB)

Corporate & Finance Law

Jerishma is a trained DRT (Debt Recovery Tribunal) practitioner and consultant, covering our corporate and finance law work including startup advisory.

Corporate Law Finance Law Startup Advisory

Our Specialist Consultants

Dr. Sara Kamyab

Dr. Sara Kamyab

Tissue Engineering Scientist
Hover to flip

Dr. Sara Kamyab

Tissue Engineering Scientist

Sara is a clinical scientist at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of IT and Biotechnology, Bharati Vidyapeeth, with multiple patents spanning tissue culture technique and cardiovascular science. She consults on tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

Tissue Engineering Regenerative Medicine
Dr. Niharika Nangia

Dr. Niharika Nangia

Clinical Pharmacologist
Hover to flip

Dr. Niharika Nangia

Clinical Pharmacologist

Niharika is a Clinical Scientist at Tata Memorial Hospital with past training at Poona College of Pharmacy. She is an expert in pharmacology, drug design, target identification and clinical trials, and consults on clinical pharmacology and drug development.

Clinical Pharmacology Drug Development
Dr. Purva Raut

Dr. Purva Raut

Hover to flip

Dr. Purva Raut

Purva is a medical graduate who drives clinical excellence and diagnostic innovation at Trax Diagnostics, working at the intersection of transplant immunology, HLA typing and post-transplant monitoring. Her focus sits on the regulatory and outcomes-transparency requirements now reshaping transplant diagnostics in India, and the infrastructure decisions behind bringing a new lab site online.

Transplant Diagnostics Immunogenetics Healthcare Entrepreneurship
Venkatram Bakthavachalam

Venkatram Bakthavachalam

Hover to flip

Venkatram Bakthavachalam

Venkatram holds an MSc in medical imaging from KTH, Sweden, and has worked in the field for over fifteen years. He founded Trax Diagnostics, a transplant diagnostics lab now running HLA typing, immunogenetics and post-transplant monitoring across Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi and Mumbai, which gives him the operator’s view of what a diagnostics business actually costs to run.

Medical Imaging Transplant Diagnostics Healthcare Entrepreneurship
Shruti Soni

Shruti Soni

Hover to flip

Shruti Soni

Shruti holds an MBA with an ISB specialisation in digital health, and is General Manager - Project Implementation at Trax Diagnostics, with prior experience at Deloitte. She builds our medical influencer networks and handles the health data behind patient acquisition.

Digital Health Digital Marketing KOL Development Influencer Outreach
7Practising Clinicians
230+Years Combined Expertise
100+Ventures Engaged
10+Clinical Specialties

Every founding member is an ISB alumnus

All founding members hold certifications from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad - which is why the commercial vocabulary is native rather than translated.

Finance literacy is not outsourced

Two of our team hold NISM certification, and our institutional finance grounding includes a former Chief Financial Advisor to AIIMS Rishikesh. Capital, valuation and structure are handled in-house.

Certified in AI for healthcare

Two co-founders are certified AI-in-Healthcare specialists. We build and apply AI where it earns its place in clinical and operational work, and say so when it does not.

Three lenses, one working group

Every engagement runs through a group of three to four clinician builders, each carrying a different lens: clinical, operational and financial. No junior substitutions - the same minds from first call to final deliverable.

AavinyaaStrategies DeRisking Healthcare Investments

Built at IIM Mumbai

AIC NIFIE at IIM-Mumbai

IIM Mumbai logo AIC NIFIE

Aavinyaa Strategies was incubated at the Atal Incubation Centre - National Institute of Financial Innovation & Entrepreneurship (AIC NIFIE) at IIM-Mumbai. This institutional foundation connects us with academics, industry leaders, and policy makers who contribute to our intelligence products and open doors for our portfolio companies. Our location in Powai, Mumbai, places us close to the capital, talent and institutions that healthcare ventures need to scale.

IIM Mumbai campus, Powai
IIM Mumbai campus, Powai — CC BY-SA 4.0, NITIE MRC

We are Building the Collective

We are always looking for clinicians, scientists, engineers and finance professionals who share our conviction that accessible, high-quality healthcare remains a persistent challenge across South-East Asia.

If you have experience in a healthcare sub-sector and want to apply it to ventures tackling real clinical and operational problems, we want to hear from you.

Clinical Experts Across Many Specialties

Practising clinicians who want to contribute their domain expertise to ventures solving problems they see daily in their clinical work.

Regulatory and Compliance Specialists

Professionals with CDSCO, DCGI, or NABH expertise who can accelerate our portfolio companies' compliance timelines.

Finance & Investment Professionals

Healthcare-sector-focused fund managers, investment bankers, and CFOs who bring capital markets expertise to our team.

Ready to Build Something Together?

If you are a domain expert who wants to contribute - we want to hear from you.