Ashwin Naik is an entrepreneur/advisor with interests in healthcare delivery, social enterprise and tech enabled health startups. Ashwin is the Founder of Vaatsalya Healthcare, an award winning social enterprise, which was the first network of hospitals focused exclusively on Tier II and Tier III towns in India. Vaatsalya has been recognised globally as winner of the Inaugural Porter Prize in India for value based healthcare, the Most Innovative Healthcare Company by VCCircle in 2014 and India’s top 10 innovative companies by Fast Company in 2013 among many other recognitions.
He is passionate about healthcare access and is now deeply engaged in building a right to primary health movement around the world. He is also a Resident Fellow and part of the Leadership Group at Ashoka, a pioneering network of social entrepreneurs worldwide. In addition he co-founded & chairs the National Association of Social Enterprises, India. To support health startups, he also leads DisruptHealth a health focussed ecosystem enabler based in Bangalore and is actively involved in the sector as an advisor and angel investor.
Ashwin is a trained physician and has written and spoken about leadership, entrepreneurship, rural health and social entrepreneurship at various forums around the world, including World Health Congress, NHS Alliance, Ashoka Future Forum, Global Philanthropy Forum, and Africa Health summit (KPMG).
Ashwin has been recognized as a Economic Times Leaders under 40, Young Global Leader (YGL) 2012 By World Economic Forum, Young Leader by Asia Society Asia21 in 2011, Senior Ashoka Fellow in 2010, Finalist for the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2010 by Schwab Foundation, Ted India fellow for 2009. Dare Magazine India in its April 2011 edition profiled Ashwin as 50 inspiring Entrepreneurs of India.
Ashwin has a medical degree from Karnatak Medical College, Hubli and a Masters from University of Houston, Texas.
Previously, he was the Vice President of Business Development and Informatics at Triesta Sciences, a clinical genomics company. Ashwin has been part of the human and mouse genome projects at Celera Genomics. He was instrumental in coordinating multidisciplinary teams to compile and analyze human and mouse genomes, leading to two publications in the journal Science. He holds three patents and has contributed a book chapter on Origin of Life.