About

Having raised over $215 million in venture capital for healthcare and life sciences startups, Ashwin (Ash) Ramachandran is the Founder and CEO of Sapyen, an at-home male fertility diagnostic company built for the 200 million aspiring fathers around the world who are struggling to conceive and feel stigmatised.

Coming from having previously led the United Nations’ efforts to mitigate the detrimental humanitarian consequences of the Arab Spring, Ash is a seasoned strategist with experience across startups and venture, diplomacy, and commercialisation. In 2018, Ash co-led the University of Melbourne’s efforts to launch Australia’s first Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer fellowship before taking on a role leading the tech investment portfolio at Australia’s largest equity crowdfunding company, Birchal.

In 2021, Ash set out to build a category-defining fertility health company not merely to construct the best clinical experience for aspiring fathers but also to build a company that would become synonymous with fertility and family. Sapyen has since been backed by venture investors, including Icehouse Ventures and Antler, and named a top 4 diagnostics company in APAC by MedTech Innovator in conjunction with Johnson&Johnson.

Ash’s career in technology commercialisation, orchestrating product launches across 4 international markets for novel diagnostics and therapeutics, led to his involvement as an advisor to Victoria University’s College of Biomedicine and Health, influencing the College’s strategic direction and supporting the development of its public health curriculum as an industry expert.

Since 2016, Ash has actively advised international venture funds through capital raises, supporting over $100 million in institutional fundraises for VC funds and syndicates, and consulted for multi-national clients, the likes of Estée Lauder, Nike, and Walgreens on matters pertaining to new product development and launch, PMF, and Intellectual Property. Ash has since been invited, as a Guest Lecturer, by reputable global university systems like Anna University.

Earlier in his career, Ash researched binary black hole systems at Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at CalTech, asteroid mining and space colonisation alongside NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and bioplastics, for which he was offered a Research Fellowship at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Ash has authored multiple papers on orbital dynamics for asteroid mining, and has received two international awards from American space agency, NASA, for his contributions.

Ash holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance and Accounting from the University of Melbourne.