Head/Director – Life Sciences

Position: Head/Director – Life Sciences

Location: Hyderabad

Experience: Minimum 10 years

Job Type: Full-time

About Research and Innovation Circle of Hyderabad (RICH):

Launched in 2017 as a first-of-its-kind initiative by the Government of Telangana, RICH has been established to bridge the gap between research and real-world applications by enabling collaboration among research and academic institutions, industry, startups, hospitals and government bodies. RICH also serves as Hyderabad's Science and Technology Cluster, under a national initiative led by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India. In this capacity, RICH drives multidisciplinary projects to address complex local and national challenges.

For more information, please visit our website:

Role Description:

Responsible for leading strategic partnerships with industry, academia, hospitals and innovation ecosystems while managing flagship programmes like AID Acceleration Initiative and Samarthan at RICH; Providing start-up advisory, overseeing project delivery, and organising impactful events in Life Sciences; Strengthening ties within the Telangana innovation ecosystem, incubators, corporates, and investors; Developing incubation content, managing budgets, and fostering multi-organisational team growth.

Roles and Responsibilities:

The broad roles and responsibilities will be as follows:

1. Partnerships: Reach out to key industry players, research and academic institutions, associations, pioneering hospitals in various clinical specialties, national and global innovation ecosystems, NGOs, government bodies to forge strategic partnerships.
2. Flagship Initiatives: Lead, manage and supervise RICH's flagship programmes: a) ABCs of MedTech Commercialization – Annual flagship event to create awareness on the process of MedTech Commercialization; b) Acceleration Initiative for Diagnostics, Devices and Digital Health (AID) – a unique cohort-based startup program that aims to identify and nurture the best startups in the diagnostics, devices and digital health space.
3. Startup Advisory: Support the core objective of RICH to assist and mentor startups in the Life-Sciences sector and help them scale up; identify potential funding avenues, market access, hospital connects to offer testbed support to test, refine and scale innovations by leveraging real world clinical settings, networking opportunities etc. for startups. Develop and maintain matrix of selecting/onboarding of startups, perform continuous quality checks, and ensure tight management of milestones and progress of startups. Maintain and update start-up grant management record.
4. Project Delivery: Design and implement multi-disciplinary projects for solving issues of regional and national priority in conformance with time, quality, scope and cost budgeted. Build working groups of various stakeholders for each project. Manage and guide the Project Manager with administrative tasks for projects. Support project outreach in consultation with the CEO and the communications team. Devise strategies for implementing and maintaining all project controls and plans. Obtain and record project status feedback from various stakeholders (including start-ups), and provide updates to the leadership.
5. Fund raising: Fundraising is a critical component of this role, requiring to identify, engage, and secure financial support from diverse sources including government grants, CSR initiatives, philanthropic foundations, and impact investors. The role involves crafting compelling proposals, building long-term relationships with funders, and aligning fundraising strategies with start-up and project goals. A strong understanding of healthcare innovation and the ability to translate technical value into fundable outcomes is essential to ensure the sustainability and growth of key initiatives.
6. Events: Design, organise and manage events, hackathons, conferences, webinars, meets on important topics in Lifesciences to provide a knowledge-sharing and networking platform for start-ups/entrepreneurs and researchers/scientists to showcase their innovations.
7. Synergy Building: Strengthen partnerships with the Telangana state innovation ecosystem partners. Work closely with various regional and national incubators/accelerators. Reach out to corporates, institutions, industry bodies, startups, MSMEs etc. with tailored offerings for each group including gathering problem statements from each group, analysing and identifying suitable partners and making relevant connections. Reach out to national and global investors, and funders to strengthen the connect for providing funding options for startups.
8. Ecosystem building: Develop content and playbooks for use by incubators/accelerators as part of incubation capacity building that will enable incubators to setup their operations and plan, facilitate, and deliver incubation programmes in a structured, standard, and consistent manner for startups. Conduct skilling/training programmes for Lifesciences industry workforce, scientists, researchers, faculty in collaboration with RICH partners.
9. Budget: Create budget for projects and periodically update the requirements for projects and other sector-specific activities.
10. Teams: Create, support, and nurture teams, and support other RICH team members to lead multiorganization projects, as identified by you and the leadership of RICH.
11. Knowledge base creation: Write white papers/position papers/reports on important topics to create awareness and support policy framework.

Fulfil and implement any other tasks in consultation with the leadership of RICH.

Qualifications and Experience:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Lifesciences or allied fields from a premier institution; a business degree would be a plus.
• At least 10 years of professional work experience in research, innovation, technology development, project management, strategy, or business development in academia, industry or government.

Desired Skill Sets:

• Strong leadership experience in design, implementation, and management of programs in organisations (governments, corporates, foundations, international organisations, research/academic institutions, incubators, consulting firms, etc.); multi-disciplinary, multi-organisation program delivery experience necessary.
• Good understanding of the entrepreneurship ecosystem - experience of working with entrepreneurs, start-ups, tinkering labs, incubators, or start-up consultancy.
• Demonstrated ability to cultivate, build and maintain strong working relationships with start-ups, entrepreneurs, mentors, research institutions, industry experts, associations, and investors.
• Strong strategic, creative, and analytical skills to develop program strategy.
• Excellent collaboration and communication (oral and written) skills in English.

RICH is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusiveness.