Harikesh Pushpapathan named partner at Stoic Venture Capital

Life sciences and deep tech VC Stoic Venture Capital has promoted Harikesh Pushpapathan to partner at the fund. 

Pushpapathan joined Stoic in early 2022 as an investment analyst, becoming an investment manager 12 months later.

He graduated from University of Sydney with degrees in psychology, neuroscience and finance, and now sits on the Uniseeed biotech investment committee as well as the Antler investment committee.

Stoic’s investments focus on university-led startups and the fund works in partnership with Uniseed, the VC arm of a several Australian universities including Queensland,  Sydney, UNSW, Melbourne, Monash, Newcastle, UTS, UWS, and Macquarie.

General partner and co-founder Guy Hedley said life sciences are the cornerstone of the fund and over the past two years Pushpapathan has used his scientific academic background to support their mission of funding research and innovation that will extend and enhance human life and the world we live in.

“Harikesh has become an important bridge between our investees and the process of raising funds to commercialise their research,” he said.

“The Stoic partners and I are very happy to recognise his contribution and to have him be part of Stoic’s long term future.”

Harikesh said he was thrilled to be named a partner at the VC.

“I have a particular interest in neurotechnology and it has been rewarding to use that to support our investees to tackle some of the worst diseases and disorders facing human health,” he said.

“Stoic and its investment partners are a unique part of the ecosystem. We support the scientists and inventors to navigate a key hurdle – financing risk. We respect the science but understand the commercial risk/return trade-off. The research and regulatory journey to market is long and complex, funding it requires specialist knowledge and skillsets across all stages.”

Stoic’s investments include chip maker Morse Micro, pharmaceutical startup Ena, which is addressing respiratory viral infections, Wildlife Drones, and cardiac rehabilitation platform Cardihab.