Blue Ridge Innovation Management Advisors work with corporations of any size and location, to fill in the resource gaps, to deliver on a critical project.  We also advise entrepreneurs and startups primarily in the Roanoke Valley and the New River Valley areas of South West Virginia.  The consulting services are structured around organizing a new venture and moving it forward to operationalize the innovation.  A defining feature of the advice is to articulate and increase the value of the entity, to make it more attractive to the investors and the partners, therefore accelerating commercialization.  Ashu is presently leading two early stage pre-revenue ventures that he co-founded.   One is in the emergency medicine space and the second one in the Controlled Environment Agriculture space.  Time permitting, Ashu has also volunteered for activities within the local innovation ecosystem.  Most recently, he was a mentor in the Health Sciences & Technology Commercialization Fellows Program, which is funded by Virginia Tech’s Office of the Vice President for Health Sciences and Technology.

Trust, quality, expertise, and long-term partnership forms the bedrock of our successful consulting engagements.

• New Product Development including setting up processes and documentation to stage gate the development through launch, and go-to-market strategy
  • • Chaired several global cross-functional innovation teams with the corporate mandate to have an active pipeline of innovation projects, in alignment with the portfolio strategy. A subset of these were pushed through the product development process leading to a successful launch in the market.  For a USD 0.5M consumable product line in the clinical diagnostics space, developed and executed on a product distribution strategy for a world-wide launch.  The launch was staggered predicated on regulatory clearance timeline       
• Customer Discovery
• Business Strategy and Development
• Strategic Partnerships
  • • Experienced in building business through strategic partnerships including the public-private business model. Developed the automation strategy for hospital and clinical reference labs.  To implement it, secured partnership with an OEM provider of lab automation, with world-wide rights, for this USD 5M per year opportunity
• Channel Management
• Project Management, domestic and global teams
  • • Broad experience leading a variety of projects – strategic planning, new product development, venture production, partnerships, M&A initiatives, divestiture, primary and secondary market research via external vendors, innovation teams. Executed on a divestiture agreement to consolidate refurbishing operations for a USD 266M medical equipment business in the nuclear medicine space
• Intellectual Property Strategy
• Financial projections
• Early stage valuation and financing options
• Business Plan