Eyeing 20-20 Vision of Excellence

Dr Jogin Desai, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Eyestem Research

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A native of Ahmedabad and an expert in the field of drug development, Dr Jogin Desai incorporated his startup Eyestem Research in India, back in 2015, aiming to democratise access to cell therapy through a scalable cell therapy platform.

The journey of Eyestem started when Dr Desai met ophthalmologist Dr Rajani Battu (currently the Chief Medical Officer at Eyestem), in 2015, for a medical appointment that changed everything for both of them. Following the appointment, Dr Rajani introduced him to patients diagnosed with degenerative diseases of the eye and the terrible suffering they have to endure. He realised that dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the largest cause of incurable blindness in the world for patients over 50 years. And this meant that for 196 million people suffering from this disease around the world, 40 million of which are in India, finding a cure is a need of the hour.

Eyestem, as a company, was initiated in late 2015 by Dr Jogin Desai, Dr Rajani Battu and Dr Dhruv Sareen, with a small project handed to a research team led by Dr Rajarshi Pal, then at Manipal Institute of Regenerative Medicine. A year later, Dr Desai approached Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms, C-CAMP, in Bengaluru, with the intention to incubate considering the state-of-the-art cell culture facilities and diverse funding and mentoring programmes available at C-CAMP. Dr Rajarshi Pal joined as a Co-Founder to incubate and lead the science.