As Chief Strategy Officer for Saama Technologies, Sagar architected and built its transformational journey, helping the company raise growth funding from global PE firms and six Pharma healthcare funds. Saama’s unique growth story was studied and published as a Case Study by Kellogg Business School.

Sagar is passionate to help biopharma create intelligent analytical solutions to operationalize insights and solve drug development challenges. He was instrumental in helping implement an AI system, Smart Data Quality (SDQ) to accelerate development of the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine.

Sagar holds three patents for his work and has received the following awards and honors:

• 2020 Pharma Voice 100: Recognized as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the Healthcare Industry.”
• 2019 PM360 ELITE: Recognized in Strategist category of ELITE (Exceptional Leaders Innovators Transformers Entrepreneurs) award.
• 2013 Innovation Enterprise: Recognized with Chief Strategy Officer of the Year Award.

In 1999, Sagar founded InfoSTEP Inc., and served as CEO until its 2010 acquisition by Saama. A highlight of this time was leading the effort to list on the Bombay Stock Exchange. He also served on the Board of ISACA, Silicon Valley Chapter.

Following a B.S. from Andhra University and an M.S. from Indian Institute of Technology (ITT) Kanpur, Sagar worked at CMC Ltd with other pioneers in mathematical font generation and transliteration systems for Indian languages.

Sagar enjoys using his spare time to develop and conduct games in Indian languages, branded as Lipi.GAME, and playing golf. The pandemic inspired Sagar to write Kuchela.AI, a fictional novel about a social entrepreneur’s journey of self discovery.