Ruchita Sinha has been senior director of investments at France-based drugs maker Sanofi’s corporate venturing unit since joining in November 2016.
Her deals at Sanofi Ventures includes a $3.5m seed round for Curisium, a US-based developer of a blockchain-equipped healthcare management platform. Sinha joined Curisium’s board as an observer.
Sinha’s best exit so far has seen Sanofi exit cancer treatment developer Impact Biomedicines, which was acquired by fellow pharmaceutical firm Celgene for $1.1bn up front but with $6bn more dependent on milestones.
Founded in 2016, Impact had acquired the development and commercialisation rights for Fedratinib from Sanofi, which in turn took an equity stake of undisclosed size in the company. Sanofi had originally developed Fedratinib but its roll-out came to a halt in 2013 when the US Food and Drug Administration issued a clinical hold order. After acquiring the rights, Impact managed, however, to convince the regulator that the issues were solvable and the hold was rescinded.
Before Sanofi Ventures she had been a director for nearly four years at GE Ventures where her deals included board observer roles at HeadSense and CareMerge. Previously she had been director for strategy, portfolio management and commercial operations at drugs peer Pfizer for nearly three years.