Mr. Ajay Kshatriya’s career mission is to build science-based companies.. Currently, Ajay is a Partner at Wilson Hill Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm, where he invests in science-based startups emerging from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In addition to leading the life science investments, he serves as the. Executive Chairman of Barrier Biosciences, a biotech creating new category of medicines using AI and spatial biology, and as a Board Director of Tera AI, a software company activating superhuman reasoning from the complex physical world.. Previously, Ajay founded and served as Chief Executive Officer of Biota, the pioneer in environmental genomics, that was acquired by the industrial biotech leader, Novozymes (NZYM). In 8 years, Biota scaled the microbiome data platform from Professor Rob Knight to a genomics diagnostics business that created $400M in economic value and saved 1.2B gallons of water for 20+ industrial companies.. Prior to founding Biota, Ajay was an associate in a $100M seed fund spun out from Mohr Davidow Ventures, XSeed Capital, that formed companies from science innovations emerging from Stanford and Berkeley. Ajay began his career at the world-leading biotechnology pioneer Genentech, where he held various positions in product operations, including two product core teams in early stage oncology.. Ajay was an active member and leader within YPO, a global organization for CEOs. He holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from U.C. Berkeley, an M.S. in engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from Berkeley-Haas School of Business. Ajay resides in San Diego with his wife Krista and two children.
