Board of Directors

Chairman

Recognized as a stalwart of the Indian banking and financial services industry, Mr. Puri was the iconic Founder-Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of HDFC Bank from its inception in 1994 until his retirement from the position in October 2020, earning the distinction of having been the longest serving head of a private bank in India.

Not only was Mr. Puri’s visionary leadership instrumental in HDFC Bank’s outstanding growth and value creation for all stakeholders, but it also led the way for several firsts and milestones for Indian private sector banking as a whole.

Prior to setting up HDFC Bank, he was Chief Executive Officer of Citibank Malaysia with nearly two decades of overall banking experience across markets with Citibank. Mr. Puri has been conferred with several prestigious awards, accolades and titles for his exceptional contribution to Indian industry, including successive appearances in Barron’s world’s 30 best CEOs lists.

Mr. Puri was inducted into the Chartered Accountants Hall of Fame by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), becoming the first member of ICAI to be honored with this award. A profile by the Economist in October 2020 describing him as the world’s best banker only further underscored Mr. Puri’s towering international reputation.

Founder and Non-Executive Director

Arun Kumar is a first-generation entrepreneur and is known for his intellect of picking “difficult to operate” domains with high scarcity value. He founded Strides Pharma Science Limited (Strides) in 1990 and has since led the company in building a global reputation with a differentiated business model and delivering value for its stakeholders
(Over $5.0 billion value creation for shareholders including distribution of the most extensive dividend by a pharmaceutical company in India).

Besides founding Strides, Arun’s family office (Setup in the early 2000s) run a
differentiated set of investments spread across several companies with a combined
revenue base over a billion dollars and an invested capital over half a billion dollars.
Arun is credited to have co-founded and built India’s largest fully integrated Animal
Health Company – SeQuent Scientific Limited in less than five years of its major investments. Arun’s ownership in SeQuent was divested to the Carlyle group in May 2020 in a strategic transaction.

Arun is the promoter of  Solara Active Pharma Sciences, A pure-play API company on course to become India’s second largest API business in under four
years. Recently, the Family office of Arun has entered into a strategic partnership with marquee investors to build a global biologics CDMO, specialty injectable and vaccine business with capabilities across several technology platforms.

The businesses run under Arun’s leadership / ownership have a presence in 100+
countries with 7000+ employees with over 25 global manufacturing facilities worldover.

Arun is a recipient of E&Y Entrepreneur of the year award in the Healthcare sector in
2000. He has also been awarded the Business Today “India Best CEO Award (Mid-
Sized Companies Category)” and the “Best CEO in the Pharma & Healthcare Industry”
in 2014.

Non-Executive Director

Mr. Kartheek Chintalapati Raju has over ten years of experience in Investment and Consulting. At iLabs, he focuses on investments across Pharma, Power, and Commercial Real Estate sectors.

He is passionate about identifying opportunities and has worked closely with the Founders in scaling up the operations and putting the companies on a higher growth trajectory.
Under Special Situations Platform of iLabs, Kartheek has played a pivotal role in acquiring distressed assets in Power, Pharma, Real Estate and Defense sectors, and worked with the Management in transforming them into profitable ventures.

Kartheek holds a Bachelor of Business Administration Degree in Economics, Accounts and Finance from Claremont McKenna College. Prior to iLabs Group, Kartheek was a Business Analyst at McKinsey & Company’s Dubai Office.

In his spare time, he enjoys sports and adventure activities which include polo, skiing, biking, and sailing.

Executive Director & Vice Chairman

Rajendra Rao commenced his professional career with Reliance Industries Ltd. Handling exports of Liquids. From the 1996 to 1998, he was an integral part of Nicholas Piramal Ltd. Through the years he began taking multi-functional responsibilities, which laid the foundation for a learning and understanding of all facets of business. He went on to initiate Pharma trading in the year 1998 and later graduated into manufacturing from contracted facilities, until the year 2003.

He then started Ra Chem Pharma, when the first manufacturing facility was acquired and the journey of Ra Chem pharma ltd commenced. Other promoter shareholders and industry professionals joined the fray at this stage with Raj being at the helm. He transformed the loss-making acquisition into a viable profit-making unit within a span of two years.

He recognized an integrated vertical model as the essence of success and value creation in pharma – a move that initiated a series of acquisitions and amalgamations. This resulted in creation of an API, FDF and a Bio analytical and bio equivalence study facility completing the vertical integration. He then focused on organic growth thereafter led to business consolidation and building of teams of integrity, competencies and abilities

Owing to a widely dispersed shareholding with varying perceptions on the growth to be pursued, Raj envisions aggressive growth plans for his new ventures and new entity, Aurore Life Sciences Pvt Ltd.

Chairman & Non-Executive Director

Mr. Deepak Vaidya is a fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. He has previously worked as the Country Head of Schroder Capital Partners (Asia) Pte. Ltd. for over 12 years. He is experienced in the corporate financial services industry in India and abroad. He is holding directorship in reputed companies.

Independent Director

Mr. Nirmal Bhogilal is the Chairman of the Batliboi Group. The Group’s operations are in Machine Tools, Textile Machinery, Air Engineering & Pollution Control Equipment, Rotating Machines, Wind Energy and Logistics.

He was Past President and currently a Committee Member of the Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers Association (IMTMA). He has been Chairman of various committees in the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) at the National & Western Region levels and is currently a member of the CII National Council. He is a Committee Member and Past President of Indo German Chamber of Commerce.

He is also a Committee Member of the Forum of Free Enterprise and a Council Member of the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA). He is an Independent Director of Chowgule Industries Pvt. Ltd. and Eimco Elecon (I) Ltd.

Independent Director and Audit Committee Chairman

Mr. R Ramakrishnan is a Fellow Member of The Institute of Chartered Accounts of India and also a Law Graduate from Bangalore University. He is a practicing Chartered Accountant and a Management Consultant at Bangalore having an experience of 36 years in Direct tax matters, Audit and Assurances. He was nominated by KSIIDC for few listed Companies and currently holds directorships in reputed companies.
He is also a Managing Trustee for RRK Foundation – a foundation financially supporting more than 100 students for Higher Secondary School to economically weaker sections and Trustee for few philanthropic organizations.
He is an Independent Director and Audit Committee Chairman of the Company.

Independent Director

Dr. Kausalya Santhanam, Founder of SciVista IP & Communication (www.scivistaip.com), is a Patent attorney registered with the Indian Patent Office as well as the US Patent and Trademark Office and Indian Patent Office. She has a Ph.D. in Cell Biology and Immunology from Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) Chandigarh. Her Post-Doctoral training was in Cancer Biology at Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, where she has published her studies in peer-reviewed journals. Later she went as a National Research Council (NRC) Fellow to Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Washington DC where her studies involved molecular mechanisms of inflammation. Following that, at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, she worked towards understanding the mechanisms of an apoptotic molecule. All the research work have been published in reputed journals. Later, she worked for five years in the Intellectual Property Department of CuraGen Corporation, a Biopharmaceutical company at Connecticut, USA. She is an Independent Director of the Company.

Independent Director

Mr. Ronald Tjeerd de Vries (Ron) is a MsC in Chemical Engineering and IMD executive Leadership Alumni. He has 25 years’ experience in the MNC Corporate Sector in Pharma and Food Presently he is Owner and MD of RDV Consulting based at Auckland (NZ).

Non-Executive Director

Mr. Ankur Thadani is a Principal at TPG Growth, based in Mumbai. He joined TPG in 2013 and has worked on multiple investments in Healthcare, Energy and Consumer sectors across India and the broader South-Asia region. Ankur also serves on the board of CTSI, Rhea Healthcare, Fourth Partner Energy and Asiri Hospitals. Prior to joining TPG, he worked with an Indian private equity fund, India Equity Partners, focusing on investments in consumer and healthcare sectors. Ankur received his MBA from IIFT, where he was awarded a Gold Medal for all-round achievement.

MD & Chief Executive Officer

Bharath has over two decades of experience across diverse industries. His expertise spans across the pharmaceutical, healthcare and material sciences industries. He has operated in countries like USA, Hongkong, China, Middle East, Africa and Europe. He has held CXO level positions in companies like DSM Sinochem Pharmaceuticals and Royal DSM NV. During the course of his career Bharath has led organizations through transformative growth. He has had particular success in putting together well thought out strategies and setting up winning teams that have delivered excellent results. At Solara, Bharath will focus on leveraging its unique strengths and abundant human talent in building a successful and growing company. Bharath is an Engineering graduate with a management degree from the Institute for Technology and Management, Chennai. He also has a master’s degree in International Management from Thunderbird School of Global Management, United States.

Executive Director & Chief Financial Officer