Our Team
Digilife is a venture capital fund focussed on health care. We specialize in investing and nurturing startups that apply new-age technologies to complex problems in healthcare. We invest in early stage companies with unique ideas. We are a team of professionals with diverse backgrounds working together to help build great companies that can make a significant impact
Meet The Team
Jenik Radon
Adjunct Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, Columbia University
Visiting faculty at Indira Gandhi Institute for Developmental Research. Order of the Cross Terra Mariana, Republic of Estonia (2016); Order of Honor (Georgia) - One of the first foreigners to receive the highest civilian award for the country. Prior to joining Columbia, Radon was a lecturer at Stanford University’s law and business schools, where he taught access to medicine, international human rights, privatization and international investment management. A board member of Ventureast, he’s an expert on contract, natural resource and constitutional law and advisor to developing nation governments on exploiting their natural resources ethically and sustainably. He is best described as an activist-lawyer. He co-founded the Afghanistan Relief Committee, which sought freedom for Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion and assisted refugees displaced by the Afghan-Soviet war. He advised the Estonian government during the country’s struggle for independence and co-authored its foreign investment, mortgage/pledge, privatization, and corporate laws. Radon participated in the constitutional peace process of Nepal and served as a drafter of the interim (2006) peace constitution, which, among other things, granted citizenship to millions of stateless people in the Terai region. Radon obtained his B.A. from Columbia University, M.C.P. from the University of California, Berkeley, and J.D. from Stanford Law School.
David Upchurch
VP of Supply Chain – Jaguar Animal Health, USA
David Upchurch is an experienced pharmaceutical executive with over 25 years in the industry. He has held positions of increasing seniority in pharmaceutical manufacturing and supply chain management for Agouron Pharmaceuticals and Gilead Sciences. He has served key roles in authoring global marketing submissions, securing approvals, launch, and lifecycle management for over a dozen novel pharmaceutical products. He obtained a BS from The University of the South, an MS from the University of Alabama-Birmingham, and an MBA from the University of San Diego.
Venkatadri Bobba
General Partner with Ventureast
Bobba brings over 36 years of corporate leadership experience in the pharmaceutical and life sciences fields in the US, EU and Asia Prior to Ventureast, Bobba served as: Vice President of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing operations at Warner Lambert Co. USAPresident of Warner Lambert, IndonesiaExecutive Vice president of Centocor Inc.(Division of J&J now) and was responsible for R&D, Clinical Development and Operations. CEO of Molecular Biosystems which developed first ultrasound contrast agent (about $250M in sales) Senior V.P of Covance Biosciences (Now a division of Merck) He currently serves on the Boards of Sparsha, Diabetomics, Cancer Genetics India and an advisory Board member of Cumberland Pharma
Venkat Vankayalapati
Serial Entrepreneur
A successful serial tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, USA. Over the course of his career, he has founded several companies in fabless semiconductors, optical communications and networking technology domain: Cavera Systems, Catamaran Communications (acquired by Infineon Technologies, Germany), V-Logic - A chip design consulting firm that has advised large tech companies like Texas Instruments, Neomagic, Cyras Systems (Ciena Corp.). Active in the early stage investing space, with some of his direct angel investments faring really well and getting acquired by the likes of GE Health and Microsoft. Ex-Limited Partner with a VC firm based in the Silicon Valley - Diamondhead Ventures. In the past he has served in Senior Management with Infineon Technologies – Catamaran, V-Logic Inc., and as Senior Executive with Amati Communications (now part of Texas Instruments) and Raynet Corp (part of Ericsson)
R. Sathya Kumar
Founder and CEO of Techindia Infoway, India
Sathya founded Techindia (Asia's largest Remote Patient Monitoring Services Enterprise today) in 2002. Techindia serves clients across the globe and provides strategic solutions to the Healthcare Services industry by refocusing on clinical outcomes; it is now 600 employees strong. He is a hands-on executive with over two decades of experience in the healthcare industry, especially in the areas of enterprise planning/re-engineering, leadership, financial growth, use of technologies and prospective outcomes. He is also an angel investor, and mentors young entrepreneurs to help build depth into their clinical processes and outcomes management.
Vamsi Maddipatla
Founder and ex-CEO of LAXAI Pharma Ltd
A visionary & an entrepreneur with 17 years of experience in technology and bio-pharma industries. Founder and ex-CEO of LAXAI Pharma Ltd – a clinical data services company based in NJ, USA. Co-founded LAXAI AVANTI Life Sciences in Hyderabad, India in 2007 that has over 120 employees providing drug discovery research services. Prior to Laxai, Vamsi was part of Pfizer, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson and Deloitte. Brings a unique blend of operational and financial experience along with a strong and expansive network of key influencers, industry experts and financial partners. Holds a Bachelor’s degree in electronics and Master’s in computer science from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Dr. Rajah Koppala
Managing Director - Avis Hospitals
A successful interventional radiologist, who owns and manages several hospitals in Hyderabad. Consultant radiologist to hospitals in Bangalore and Chennai. Passionate Digital Health evangelist, who exited a successful tele-radiology business in the past, was an early investor in Portea and founded Celes Care. Is extensively trained in Vascular and Interventional Radiology. He obtained his MD degree from India (Osmania University) followed by FRCR & CCST in the United Kingdom. This was Followed by American Interventional Radiology fellowship and board certification from Emory University hospital, Atlanta, USA.
Rama Krishna Donepudi
Business Transformation & Intelligent Automation at RB
Strategic leader with an overall experience of 17 years, of which 14 years was in North America leading large business transformation projects for various fortune 500 clients across multiple industries including Life Science, Health care and consumer goods (Mead Johnson Nutrition, Varian Medical Systems, Reckitt Benckiser). In 2017, spearheaded an initiative to make a case to the Reckitt Benckiser CEO and CFO on the vision, strategy and benefits of building a centralized global transformation team for RB, which was readily approved for implementation. Currently on an expat assignment in India with the credit of successfully establishing RB Global Transformation Hub in Hyderabad. Leading innovation team in RB, working closely with head of R&D for RB’s healthcare business unit. Invested in tech start up at a seed fund stage, in which Tiger Global invested in Series A.Graduated from North Western University, Kellogg School of Management in 2017 with a network of highly talented and accomplished individuals from various walks of life
Gopal Kolli
Director of eCommerce at Levi Strauss & Co.
Director of eCommerce at Levi Strauss & Co. Responsible for $300M P/L of Levi’s online sales in North America. Previously, he worked as a Senior Manager at Amazon. Built and grew the online mattress category to $800M in 18 months. Advisor to a China based Mattress company, Sweetnight.com. Helped them scale US business to $40M in 2 years. Worked as a Supply Chain consultant for Fortune 500 companies such as Costco Wholesale, Mead Johnson, Home Depot, McKesson etc. MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business with specialization in Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Finance. Editor of a bootstrapped online media business based out of Hyderabad, India.
Ellen Olivier
Media, Publicity and Public Relations
Ellen's background is in media, most recently as a contributing writer to the Los Angeles Times for the past 11 years on the subjects of lifestyle, fashion and entertainment, and previously, as society editor of the Orange County Register. In addition to her work as a journalist, she owned an award-winning public relations agency, managing publicity, marketing, promotions and media training for a wide variety of clients, often acting as their spokesperson on radio and television shows. Her clients included companies in retail, hospitality, healthcare and other fields. Over the years, she served on various boards, including the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, Women in Film, South Coast Repertory Theatre, the Costume Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Blue Ribbon of the Los Angeles Music Center, the Orange County Museum of Art and the Orange County Philharmonic Society.
Kiran Yarlagadda
Technologist
Kiran Kumar M Yarlagadda, is a technologist with 20+ years of global experience. He currently works at a bank as a Vice President in the Technology Infrastructure Architecture team with focus on Analytics, Cloud, Converged Infrastructure, Databases and Governance. Prior to this he was the Chief Technology Officer for AuraBlocks, an Oracle Silver partner and a global enterprise Blockchain consulting company delivering services in several key verticals: Financial Services, Federal, Healthcare and more. His team was the first global company to build multiple working demo solutions on Oracle Blockchain Cloud service in 2017 & 2018. He designed and led the introduction of RapidBlocks product at Oracle Open World 2018. RapidBlocks, was a design proposal for a first SaaS product to natively work with Oracle Blockchain platform. He led IT Architecture work in the Distributed Ledger Technology and Digital Transformation space. (Oracle Open World 2018, RapidBlocks introduction) He is the founder of Columbia Blockchain Alliance, a 650+ member group community of Columbia University students, alum, and academia that comes together on a regular basis to bring the conversation of Blockchain and its ecosystem to the front and center of Columbia University. He has been a speaker, moderator and a panelist on multiple academic and industry Blockchain events. He was a mentor in “The Columbia | IBM Launch Accelerator” Prior to AuraBlocks, Kiran founded DataMagnus, a boutique Data, Analytics, Big Data and cloud consulting company that served clients in the Financial Services, Real Estate, Energy & Healthcare industries. He helped industry leaders deploy global digital infrastructure and superior customer experiences that enabled business success. Prior to founding DataMagnus, Kiran worked for several Asset Management, Hedge Fund & Insurance companies in New York City, during which he created and ran global technology engineering and operations teams. DataMagnus continues to serve clients. Also, at a California startup founded by an ex-Goldman Sachs trader, he wrote the backend engine for an Alternative Trading System (ATS) that was built to trade municipal bonds. Early on in his career, working for a global BPO IT services company based out of Bangalore in India, he traveled around the world (London, Belgium) to deliver technology consulting services for clients in Pharmaceutical, Healthcare Insurance/Billing, e-Retail & Warehouse logistics industries. Kiran has a Bachelor’s (BS) degree in Computer Science from Madurai Kamaraj University, India. He received his Executive Master of Science(MS) in Technology & Management from Columbia University, New York City. At Columbia University, he teaches a semester-long virtual course titled, “UNDERSTANDING BLOCKCHAIN, AI, & MACHINE LEARNING” that introduces the class to the fundamentals, capabilities and opportunities in the space. Prior to this, he worked as a lecturer in Columbia University’s applied analytics master’s program. He also taught sessions on Blockchain in the Columbia Business School's Advanced Management Program to a group of CEO, CIO and C-Suite leaders from around the world. He co-founded coolphabets.com and is an investor and analyst at DigiLife fund. He is a board member of the Fibrous Dysplasia Alliance
Nandhan Puppala
Head - Globalization at Uber
Nandhan heads globalization at Uber and is responsible for globalizing all Tech, content and marketing communications. In the past, Nandhan headed Engineering services and Map editing programs at Uber. Nandhan has vast experience building large tech teams from scratch and scaling them. He built multiple such teams for Uber's Maps and Autonomous Vehicles divisions. Before Uber, Nandhan held Engineering and Product management roles at Hexagon. Nandhan has a Bachelors of Engineering from Osmania University and an MBA from Indian School of Business specializing in Technology Management and Strategy.