Dr. Saarthak Bakshi: The Journey of a Visionary Founder

Every industry that grows at scale eventually needs founders who can see beyond their own company, people who build something of their own while also shaping the ground for others to grow on. India’s healthcare sector is at exactly this stage right now, expanding fast, drawing in new technology and new capital, and looking for leaders who can guide it toward a future that is both innovative and accessible for a country as large and diverse as India.

Dr. Saarthak Bakshi’s journey fits into this moment in a fairly distinct way. He is the Founder and CEO of Risaa IVF, a fertility care organisation that has now been active in Indian healthcare entrepreneurship for over 14 years, and he is also an angel investor at Neos Angels, where he backs early-stage startups across sectors including healthtech, edtech, consumer brands, and social impact. Running a healthcare company and actively investing in new ones at the same time is not the usual path, and it is part of what makes his story worth looking at more closely.

From Engineering to Fertility Care

What makes this journey more interesting is where it began. Dr. Saarthak Bakshi did not start out in medicine, he comes from an engineering background, having studied computer engineering before moving into the corporate and consulting world. This gave him a foundation in structured problem-solving, the kind of thinking that is often missing in how healthcare organisations are traditionally run.

His shift toward healthcare came from a personal experience, watching his mother, Dr. Rita Bakshi, spend decades helping couples deal with infertility. That closeness to the field changed how he thought about his own career, and he eventually chose to bring his engineering and business mindset into a sector that needed better systems, better patient experience, and more structured growth. He later completed his MBA from the Indian School of Business, which further shaped the way he approached building Risaa IVF, not as a single clinic, but as a scalable, multi-location healthcare business.

Building Risaa IVF

Under his leadership, Risaa IVF has grown from a single centre in Delhi into a network of 14 branches spread across India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. This expansion did not happen overnight, it has taken more than fourteen years of steady, careful growth, adding new centres as the organisation’s clinical standards and patient support systems could support them. In a field like fertility care, where trust plays as big a role as medical expertise, this kind of measured growth matters more than rapid expansion for its own sake.

A Mentor and Investor to India’s Next Founders

In addition to Risaa IVF, Dr. Saarthak Bakshi has undertaken the role of being an entrepreneur’s mentor and angel investor in India. As the founder of Neos Angels, he has invested in over 30 startups that are still in their initial stages, providing them not only with financial resources, but also mentoring as founders of such startups are still trying to figure out how to scale their business.

Dr. Saarthak Bakshi has chosen the following industries for his investments and mentoring: healthtech, given his experience in the industry, as well as edtech, consumer brands, and startups with social impact. One of his major messages for young entrepreneurs is to come up with the idea and develop it instead of fearing failure. This role as an investor is not incidental to his work, it reflects a belief that India’s healthcare industry, and its broader startup ecosystem, will only grow stronger if experienced founders actively make room for newer ones.

What His Journey Says About Vision

Taken together, these different parts of his journey, an engineer who moved into healthcare, a founder who built a multi-country fertility care network, and an investor who mentors the next wave of entrepreneurs, paint a picture of what a visionary founder in today’s India can look like. It is not defined by a single skill or a single company, but by the willingness to keep learning, adapting, and investing in others beyond one’s own success.

Final Words

As the Indian healthcare industry continues to grow in new territories, use advanced technologies, and attract younger talent, Dr. Saarthak Bakshi’s journey provides an excellent reference point to consider. His work at Risaa IVF shows what patient-focused, steady growth in healthcare can look like, while his role at Neos Angels shows how experienced entrepreneurs can help shape the ecosystem around them. Together, they suggest a future where India’s healthcare industry keeps moving forward, not through any single company, but through founders who build carefully and invest generously in what comes next.