Ricky Mehra is an early-stage VC in the healthtech and longevity space. Previous to this Ricky was a benchtop scientist, analyst, strategy consultant, entrepreneur and investor from Toronto, Canada. He had a successful exit from a big-data predictive healthtech company and has an obsession for expanding human healthspan by leveraging the convergence of health and technology.

He earned a dual B.Sc degree in human biology and pharmacology (Univ. of Toronto) so that he could better understand, from a systems perspective, the complexity of the human body. He then pursued and completed graduate research (M.Sc, Univ. of Toronto) where he characterized ubiquitous zinc-finger transcriptions factors in the osteogenic pathway. Realizing gene editing was still in early days, he switched to the medical device industry.

After completing his graduate degree, Ricky wanted to better understand the nature of medical implants and biopharmaceuticals (neuro, cardio, ortho, imaging, robotics, women’s/men’s health+). He began as an analyst at a strategic health consultancy, modelling global markets for the medtech sector (post acquisition, exposure to biopharma). These analytics were then sold to industry and buy/sell side funds. It was here that he honed his skills as an analyst, consultant, sales and marketing exec and new product innovator/developer.

Ricky founded and ran a disruptive big-data predictive analytics healthtech company (Q2 Metrics) servicing the healthcare industry. Clients included but were not limited to global F500 medical and pharmaceutical companies (e.g. Johnson & Johnson, Gilead, GE, Medtronic, McKesson, Stryker, BD, Boston Scientific, Abbott, Biomet-Zimmer). The company was bootstrapped and became revenue positive by year one. Four years later, it was listed #22 on Canada’s fastest growing companies Profit50 Startup list. The company had a focus on data analytics and algorithmically derived insights. Thru HIPAA compliant means, the company was able to access detailed data on ~1 million US practitioners, ~180 million US patients (3-7 years of longitudinal data) and procedure volumes across ~10,000 US hospitals/ASCs and systems. The SaaS (Software as a Service) platform eventually evolved to a DaaS (Data as a Service) platform and strategically API’d intelligence into Salesforce.com.

In 2016, there was some consolidation in the health data space. IBM acquired Truven Health Analytics ($2.6B) and IMS Health and Quintiles had a $10B merger, forming a $35B market cap F300 firm (NYSE: IQVIA). By leveraging compute power, intelligent analytics, studying market trends and listening closely to clients, Q2 Metrics was able to create a very valuable and sticky solution. This allowed it to overcome the large budgets, existing embedded relationships and sheer human headcount that the top two behemoths (listed above) possessed. 

After acquiring 31 of the top 35 global medical device firms along with several top pharma companies as customers, Q2 Metrics became an industry disrupter and surfaced on the radar of strategics. After initiating a bidding war, Ricky led the company’s M&A activities and took the firm to a successful non-dilutive, non-iBank exit via a strategic acquisition from a publicly traded global conglomerate (NYSE: IQVIA), demonstrating significant ROI for investors

(~10x in < 5 years). Ricky’s role was focused on Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Product Vision and Development, Strategic Partnerships, Strategic Vision and M&A.

In the two years post exit, Ricky created strategic relationships with various university tech transfer offices, incubators, accelerators and venture partners (early and late-stage VC/PE) in order to assess tier 1 deal flow and finalize his forthcoming venture thesis. He also mentored and advised 50+ companies in the space.

Ricky has founded and is currently raising a venture capital fund focused on early-stage investments in digital healthtech companies utilizing convergence technologies of the fourth industrial revolution with a vision to increase healthspan and democratize medicine. The thesis will focus on companies in the precision, preventative and agetech spaces. Segments of interest include: Health Analytics, Mobile Health, Telemedicine, Digital Therapeutics and Longevity. Enabling technologies of interest include AI/big data, machine vision, distributed ledger, additive manufacturing, neurotech/bci, synthetic biology, nanotherapeutics, gene editing/engineering, regenerative, stem/cell therapy, quantum, and mixed reality (AR/VR). Ricky has embedded networks within the healthtech startup scene which allows for tier 1 deal flow from various hubs around the world (Toronto, Montreal, Waterloo, Boston, NYC, Silicon Valley, Israel, Oxford and Singapore). His extensive healthcare experience and global virtual advisory team allow for sophisticated de-risking from a business and scientific perspective as well as expedited marquee first-customers and (JV) partnerships. His experience with launching and leading a lean startup thru exit (with bidding war) will be leveraged as an active board member as he helps to transact the ~15-20 portfolio companies the fund takes positions in. Continuum Ventures has a world-class team to help execute on the vision.