Ajay Dhankhar, Ph.D.

Senior Partner, Pharmaceutical and Medical Products (PMP)
McKinsey & Company

Ajay Dhankhar is a senior partner in McKinsey’s pharmaceutical and medical products (PMP) practice, and has been with the firm for 20 years. He is the leader of PMP’s global strategy, M&A and risk practice, and previously led the global R&D practice. He is an expert on the medical device, biotech, pharmaceuticals, CRO/CMO and allied industries. He is also a co-leader of, and faculty in, McKinsey’s internal partner training programs.

Dhankhar has led McKinsey’s client service with ~15 PMP companies across North America, Europe and Asia. He has helped several of them with delivering transformative shareholder value (~20-80% TRS CAGR) via M&A/JV/licensing transactions, “Darwinian” portfolio and capital management, activist investor responses, value pricing, increases in R&D productivity, delivering large scale post-merger integrations, launching new products and driving growth in emerging markets.

Some of Dhankhar’s publications include: “Managing the health of early-stage discovery” in Nature Reviews DD; “Evolution or Revolution” ‒ a compendium of McKinsey perspectives on drug and device R&D; "Escaping the sword of Damocles: Toward a new future for pharmaceutical R&D,” which appeared in McKinsey Quarterly online and many others. Dhankhar has also published in the Journal of Neurophysiology, Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism and PNAS.

Dhankhar received his Ph.D. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale University, where he was a university fellow and a Miles Award finalist. He also holds bachelor’s degrees in physics and computer science from Angelo State University (Texas Tech System), graduating summa cum laude and as the Presidential Award winner (most distinguished graduate).