The Maratha Chamber of Commerce Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) felicitated entrepreneur and biotechnologists Gauri Gholap for Ramabai Joshi award by S K Jain, VP at MCCIA. Dr Deepak Shikarpur, Rairikar and Abhijeet Gholap were present during this event. This award is given to woman entrepreneurs who make significant contributions to industrial growth in this country. Gauri Gholap is co-founder and executive director of OPTRA Systems Pvt Ltd, headquartered in Pune.

Gauri Gholap, a biotechnologist by profession co-founded OPTRA Systems as her second venture after she moved back to India in 2006. Before founding Optra Systems, She was a cofounder of Silicon Valley based Digital Pathology Company located in California. Gauri is responsible for enriching the domain knowledge of the company as well as involved in strategic planning and business development activities. Gauri has over a decade of experience working in genetics, cytology, microbiology, molecular biology, medical imaging and bioinformatics field.

Earlier, Gauri was selected as a young scientist for research programmes in Biotechnology and Microbiology. She has 8 US patents pending along with PCT applications with First Patent published. She also has published many research papers in International Journals and has participated as speaker in many international conferences. Prior to her entrepreneurial stint, Gauri worked for various Bioinformatics companies offering genomic and proteomic related services, molecular modeling, clinical trials/CRM, database management services, highthroughput data analysis and tool-based pharmacogenomics solutions.

Gauri’s vision is to establish OPTRA Systems as a leading Digital Healthcare company globally. OPTRA is presently serving leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies while offering software solutions and services. Recently OPTRA signed a long term partnership with Oxford’s.