Mr. Vishal Gandhi
Mr. Vishal Gandhi is the Founder and CEO of BIORx Venture Advisors Pvt Ltd (BVA) and leads an accomplished team of MBAs, Chartered Accountants and Life -Sciences Domain Experts. The focus of BVA has been on providing Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) /J.V advisory services, Technology Transfer, Commercial and Technical due diligence and helping clients raise capital. He has provided opinions and reports on over 100 valuations in his career.
Prior to starting his own company, Vishal had a 7 year stint with YES Bank, where he significantly developed the Life Sciences and Healthcare Vertical bringing in business from over 35 significant transactions in the area of M&A/Private Equity /Debt Space. He was extensively involved in financial, technical and commercial due diligence for Bank In -house clients and had worked with various Govt. agencies in conceptualization and implementation of the funding schemes. Some of marquee transactions he worked on includes financing of India’s largest Multi-Specialty single location hospital “Medanta Medicity” at NCR- Gurgaon. Vishal has authored/presented 6 Knowledge papers and published few articles related to various facets of Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices.
He started his career with Dabur Pharmaceuticals, now owned by German Firm Fresenius & Kabi. He had worked there on the development of Novel Biological Entities (NBEs) i.e Peptide based drugs for the treatment of Cancer. He also led Bioinformatics research work, was later commercialized through Dabur’s Venture Oncquest and he became a part of founding team at Oncquest. Vishal’s subsequent assignments were with Ranbaxy, now owned by Japanese Firm “ Daichii Sankyo” in their Biotechnology Division as Project Manager. He had a brief stint at FICCI therein he represented Indian Biotechnology industry and worked very closely with DBT, Govt of India on the development of National Biotechnology Development Strategy. Vishal’s main achievement at FICCI was policy change related to exemption of Service tax for then CRO emerging sector. Vishal brings over all 14 years of diverse experience in Healthcare, Financing, Strategy, business development, and public policyadvocacy. He has been a part of various business delegations to US, Canada,China, Hungary and U.K for facilitating Biotechnology and Pharma Bilateral trade.
Vishal’s knowledge ranges from Biotechnology, Pharmaceuticals, Medical Devices to Finance to Management. After a Bachelors degree in Applied Sciences from Delhi University & Masters degree in Life sciences from the University of Hyderabad, he went on to complete an executive management degree from XLRI, Jamshedpur with specialization in finance and strategy. He has also obtained a PG diploma in IPR management from Institute of Intellectual Property. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD with specialization in Strategy Management.
Vishal is/was a member of various sectoral taskforces of the respective industry associations, including, TIE,FICCI, ABLE, OPPI, IDMA, BDMA and DBT-BIRAC, USIBC taskforce for Biotechnology and Nanotechnology, among others. He was also a Jury member for Bio-spectrum awards for the year 2011.
He is often quoted on Business magazines /news-paper on his views /outlook for the sector. Recently, he has been included in the Academic Advisory Council of BIMTECH [Birla Institute of Management Technology]. He has conducted a first-ever focused workshop on Venture Capital and Private Equity in Life Sciences in Hyderabad, which was received very well. Vishal is a also a Mentor at various forums including the most prestigious Platform of CIIE of IIM Ahmedabad.