Balaji Vasudevan, PhD

Dr. Balaji Vasudevan joined the KickStart Venture Services team in February 2024. He is a globally recognized and active thought leader in food and agriculture sector. He is a startup hatcher and nurser, provide venture builder services to global startup founders working to help translate novel ideas and innovations into ventures.  With over 20 years of synthetic biology, agtech, agbiotech, agri-foodtech, climate ag, novel foods, regen ag experience in global consulting for startups in 10 plus countries, industry, VC, CVC, angels, incubator, accelerator, venture studio and academia combined, he is driven by a desire to help companies bring break-through agri-food technologies to market that create a sustainable climate-resilient food and agriculture eco-system to fight against climate change impact on global food security.  He applies his VC, academic and industry synbio, agtech, agri-foodtech background, experience, global network of over 30K agtech/agri-foodtech connections and over 32K followers in multiple agri-foodtech sectors to identify, scout, source, evaluate, diligent and support exceptional technology-focused future agri-foodtech start-ups in ten plus countries in all the six continents.  He is also a mentor, advisor/science consultant/SAB member for global agri-foodtech companies and VC cohorts like Big Idea Ventures, FFVC, WFA, Climate VC, ProVeg Incubator, Braid Theory Accelerator, CLS in US, France, Germany and Israel.

He uses his academic and industry agri-foodtech experience in multiple technologies and innovations such as GMO, gene editing, RNAi, Alt. proteins, cellular agriculture, gene silencing, RNA biopesticides, plant molecular farming, plant disease resistance, agbiologicals, novel foods, plant tissue culture, plant cell biology, plant molecular biology, agri-foodtech scouting, agri-foodtech market landscape and competitive intelligence in agrifoodtech to identify and support exceptional technology and solutions focused future agri-food and synbio start-ups.  He is involved in agri-foodtech and synthetic biology innovations scouting, business market following, competitive intelligence, consulting, SAB advisor, board of directors, business development, agrifoodtech startup fund raiser, impact investing, agtech startup due-diligence, agtech conference key note speaker, panelist in agri-foodtech conferences, webinars, and career workshops conducted by premier organizations like global engage, ASPB, ASM, Hanson Wade, INRA and WBF, OCM member, startup mentor, SME, cohort member, agtech global community helper, scientific forum advisor, fund raiser, startup builder, grant reviewer, editor for science journals, peer-reviewer for agtech science journals, blog and white paper contributor, judge in foodtech challenge events, agtech research and science communicator, agri-foodtech regulatory policy speaker.  He is also an editorial board member for 2 journals and reviewer for 8 peer-reviewed journals in plant science and agri-foodtech domain.  He earned his Ph.D. in plant biotechnology in India.  Worked in six agri-foodtech industries in USA and India, and at three globally reputed Universities.  His post-doctoral training was at Cornell University, USA; Nobel Research Institute, USA and Tel-Aviv University, Israel. He has 17 refereed international publications in top plant science journals (eg. Nature Communications, Nature Scientific Reports, Plant Cell, Plant Physiology, Plant Journal, MPMI etc.) and couple of pending patents.