Villoo Morawala-Patell

Villoo Morawala-Patell is the founder and current Chairman and Managing Director of Indian Biotechnology company Avesthagen.[1][2] Her efforts to create an Indian based intellectual-property driven biotechnology company attracted more than 70 million USD in venture capital before largely collapsing around 2012 with a failed public offering, the exit of senior executives, the shutdown of manufactoring and the cessation of most research activities.[3] Criminal and civil matters relating to Villoo Morawala-Patell and Avesthagen continue to be litigated through the courts.[4]

Villo Morawala-Patell
Born (1955-06-18) 18 June 1955
EducationOsmania University, Bombay University, University of Strasbourg (University Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg), University of Ghent.
OccupationChairperson of Avesthagen
Notes
Officer of the National Order of Merit

Life and education

Villoo earned a Master of Science degree in Medical Biochemistry from the University of Mumbai, then a PhD from the Institut de Biologie Moleculaire des Plantes (IBMP-CNRS), University of Strasbourg, France. Prior to obtaining her doctorate, Morawala-Patell worked as a Research Associate at ICRISAT (International Crop Research Institute for the Semi Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) for 10 years. After receiving her PhD, she returned to India, becoming a post-doctoral Rockefeller Fellow at the University of Ghent. Morawala-Patell was next a Visiting Scientist and Rockefeller Fellow at NCBS-TIFR, and Professor Emeritus at University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore.

Avesthagen

Morawala-Patell founded Avesthagen Limited in 1998. Over the next two decades, the company was the recipient of more than 70 million USD in venture capital and strategic global funding and grew to become one of India's foremost biotechnology companies with more than 650 employees. The company acquired a large portfolio of patents and intellectual property that it was unable to adequately commercialise leading to revenue crisis around 2012.[3] A failed public offering saw a number of exits by senior executives and retrospective salary cuts to existing staff that led to several former staff filing criminal and civil charges against the company for breaching employment contracts and failing to make payments into employee provident funds.[5]

Awards

  • 2005
    • The GR8! Women Award for Science & Technology by the Indian Television Academy[6]
  • 2008
    • Officer of the National Order of Merit by the President of the French Republic[7][8][9]
    • Recognised by the Adolfo Ibanez University for Achievements in Innovation and Creation of Value. Award was conferred upon her at the opening of VentureL@b by President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet[10][11]
  • 2009
    • Karmaveer Puraskar award as a Corporate Citizen for her contribution in the field of agriculture and healthcare in by iCONGO for Citizen Action and Social Justice.[12]
    • Villo Morawala received the prestigious the Businesswoman of the Year Award 2010 for business excellence at Satya Brahma founded Pharmaleaders 3rd Annual Pharmaceutical Leadership Summit 2010 in Mumbai.[13]
gollark: Your phone is probably only doing video decoding, which it likely has dedicated hardware for.
gollark: I was intending to make it catch segfaults and mmap in a new region or something to make them not segfault. Unfortunately, this *apparently* invokes vast amounts of horrible undefined behavior and "isn't allowed" and "will summon nasal demons which will destroy everything".
gollark: Unfortunately, my excellent code appears to not work properly.```c#include <stdio.h>#include <signal.h>#include <string.h>#include <stdlib.h>#include <sys/mman.h>#include <unistd.h>static void handler(int sig, siginfo_t *info, void *utterly_worthless_argument) { printf("oh bees segfault %08x\n", info->si_addr); int ps = getpagesize(); long ad = (long)info->si_addr; ad = ad - (ad % ps); mmap((void*)ad, 0x10000, PROT_NONE, MAP_ANONYMOUS|MAP_FIXED, -1, 0);}int main() { struct sigaction sa; sigemptyset(&sa.sa_mask); sa.sa_flags = SA_NODEFER; sa.sa_sigaction = handler; sigaction(SIGSEGV, &sa, NULL); *(int*)NULL = -3; printf("thing done\n"); return 0;}```
gollark: Why are people not arbitraging this?
gollark: I don't think you can do that without extra hardware.

References

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