Nidhi Saxena: an inborn entrepreneur honed by valuable corporate experience
Nidhi Saxena is the genius behind Karmic Lifesciences and now the director of Zoctr Health Pvt. Ltd.
Her early life involved being schooled in the city of Allahabad. She’s quoted as saying “As a child, I was a bit of a rebel”. She shifted to Mumbai thereafter pursuing MBA at the SP Jain, Mumbai. Since then there was no looking back.
She fetched herself over 16 years of valuable work experience at some of the top names in India and Abroad. She moved around cities in the US, only gaining more work insights to benefit her in the entrepreneurial world she was soon going to enter. From GE to Wipro Technologies to WNS, she gained immensely in terms of honing her skills for what was going to come. Her widespread experience ranged across the world of Marketing, financial planning, I.T., people management and operations. In fact at WNS North America, she served as the Vice President of Financial services and closed the deal for 2 key accounts for the wing.
Her awards and achievements exemplify par excellence in everything she has touched. ‘Customer Services Excellence Award at GE’, ‘Emerging Business Woman of the Year 2013’ and ‘Leadership Award for Industrial Development’ to name a few.
Wait there’s even more! Nidhi is a Six Sigma Black Belt, certified from KPMG. She has been actively involved in 20+ leadership and management training programs. She went on to take her entrepreneurial venture to be the ‘Clinical Data Management Company of the Year’ when she herself had no background in life sciences or medicine prior to establishing Karmic.
So how was it that this immensely successful corporate career of Nidhi turned into a life sciences based start-up?
Nidhi still recalls that moment of decision-making as the turning point in her life. She said that the biggest challenge she had to face was to be able to give up that secured luxurious corporate success and go in for something so uncertain. All she knew was that she had this inherent passion and longing to be an entrepreneur.
She then faced her next big challenge of prepping herself up with the clinical know-how required to run a contract research organisation, specializing in Oncology Cardiovascular, Diabetes and Neurology. She gained hands-on experience in the clinical research industry at J J hospital.
She had registered Karmic in 2005 itself. However, it was only in 2008 that she quit her job and began Karmic’s operations full time.
Since she herself wasn’t from the life sciences background, another great challenge for was to raise funding for the company. Around 1 crore of capital was put together via personal savings and the Indian Angel Network to start off the Karmic journey from Mumbai.
The conviction and efforts of Nidhi paid off eventually. A Big 3 sponsor appointed Karmic for a CDM project that really boosted the overall growth of the company.
Karmic went on to progress in heaps and bounds, gaining considerable amounts of funding along the way. Eventually, it was acquired by Cliantha Research, a subsidiary of Zydus Cadila in 2014. Post this Nidhi ventured into Zoctr Health Pvt. Ltd that she is strengthening on currently.
An incredible contribution of this enigmatic woman entrepreneur has been the ‘Women in Bio (WIB)’. It stands for encouraging and empowering women in this particular field of life-science. The aim was to recognize and further hone Indian women contributors to the industry. Scholarships, financial aids for research and awards have been the mechanisms used.
As for Nidhi’s mentors herself, she takes Mr Warren Buffer to be her idol. Her cousin and CEO of Hexaware, Mr Rusi Brij and Mr Sanjeev Verma, on-board with many US venture groups mentor Nidhi from time to time.
She is a vibrant soul who loves to travel, read poetry, play squash and capture moments with her camera. She follows and preaches that “there is no short cut to success” and that “creativity is extremely important”.
