Our Team

Dheeraj Gorukanti is an entrepreneur with over 17 years of experience. Dheeraj is the CEO of Yashoda Group, the holding company, where he is involved in crafting the Group’s culture and defining its future growth opportunities. As the Founder and CEO of Graviti Pharmaceuticals, he drives the company’s vision, strategy and innovation efforts.

He is passionate about shaping the future of two high-impact areas: healthcare and education. With Starof, his vision is to improve productivity on a foundation of talent development. He drives the company’s endeavours in continuously solving the problem of talent matching in a manner that unlocks growth for both companies and professionals.

His areas of expertise include identification of business opportunities after diligent evaluation of risks, developing strategic business plans and roadmaps for implementation, implantation through focussed involvement and building goal-oriented professional teams for managing the operations. In his career, Dheeraj has been instrumental in identifying viable opportunities in several sectors for expansion and diversification and successfully implementing them.

Before Yashoda, he worked for the Boston Consulting Group in their Washington DC office. During his tenure at BCG, he acquired deep insights into the pharmaceuticals, retail and financial services verticals, particularly in the US. Dheeraj has a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai and an MBA degree from Duke University, US.

Prabhat Sharma is a recruitment professional with over 18 years of experience and leads recruitment and business operations of Starof. Before joining Starof, he worked with Randstad, TeamLease and First Meridian Group. During his tenure, he assisted several clients in hiring the best talent across geographies, skills and provided solutions to resolve critical talent acquisition challenges. He has Bachelor degree in Science, a Masters in Eng. Lit., Masters in Linguistics and a PGCHRM certificate from XLRI.

Suguna is a senior executive in the healthcare industry with extensive experience in business strategy and marketing. An experienced leader in Brand Management, she has a strong background in new product development and customer engagement, strategic marketing and brand development.

In her career, she has been at the forefront of pioneering innovation and emerging technologies to drive business growth and to enhance revenue performance for leading healthcare organizations including Yashoda Healthcare and Graviti Pharmaceuticals. She has a solid track record in delivering product launches, customer value propositions and capability developments as well as large-scale project delivery to transform mature organizations and enable start-ups to reach their potential.

She also worked in international markets, most notably in her stint at the Citibank in Singapore and New York. Suguna has a proven track record of a customer-centric approach and a relentless ability to drive excellence from those around her. She is a great collaborator, with strong cross-functional leadership skills and a solid delivery record.

She also has extensive experience as an in-house consultant specializing in developing brand identity, guidelines, tone of messaging and ensuring a consistent brand personality across all touch points. She completed her MBA from the Duke University, US in 2007 and her undergraduate degree in management from Delhi University in 2002.

Chandrakanth Chereddi is an advisor to Starof. Chandrakanth is a senior board level executive who currently serves on the board of Laurus Labs Ltd (NSE:LAURUSLABS) and is an external advisor to a prestigious global consulting firm. Until March 2020, he was an executive at Laurus Labs playing a senior management & board role. Prior to Laurus, Chandrakanth worked at McKinsey serving clients across sectors, with a focus on Generic Pharma. Before consulting, Chandrakanth was a software engineer and worked at Google Inc. in their Mountain View, CA headquarters. Chandra has a post-graduate diploma in Business Management from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad; a Masters of Science in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science & Engineering from the University College of Engineering, Osmania University, Hyderabad.