Prateek Garg

Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

“Balancer of health equity and financial equity — pulling activists to financial sustainability, and investors to impact.”

Hometown: Ghaziabad, India

Fun Fact About Yourself: I used to be a national-level player in table tennis in the under-14 category, but anyone who has seen my grey hair can guess how long ago that was.

Undergraduate School and Major:

Undergraduate: Bachelors in Interdisciplinary Life Sciences, University of Mumbai

Graduate: Masters in Interdisciplinary Approaches to Life Sciences, University of Paris

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Founding member and Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Open Source Pharma Foundation

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of Oxford Saïd’s MBA programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you?

I run the Open Source Pharma Foundation, where we develop drugs and vaccines for diseases that traditional markets neglect. We do this by innovating across multiple dimensions—research methodology, business models, intellectual property, and financial instruments.

So, for me, the defining feature of Oxford Saïd was the 1+1 MBA program. Unlike many MBA candidates, I wasn’t shopping around for business schools — Oxford’s 1+1 was the only program that even made me consider an MBA. It affirmed something deeply personal: an understanding of the dualities we navigate in the world.

Every 1+1 combination is designed for impact, bringing together fields that sit at critical intersections. In my case, it meant combining my MSc in International Health and Tropical Medicine — focused on health equity and access in resource-limited settings — with the power of business and finance to solve these challenges, whether through entrepreneurship or innovative funding models.

Additionally, there was a full scholarship – Pershing Square – which was specifically meant for 1+1 scholars. And coming from a non-profit background and planning to continue in it post MBA, I just totally would not have been able to afford the program at all without the scholarship. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to get it awarded to me. It gave me a two-year experience at Oxford, allowing me to be part of the business school from year one, while still being deeply immersed in global health research.

What course, club, or activity has been your favorite part of the Oxford Saïd MBA experience? Without a doubt, Finance Lab, led by John Gilligan, has been the most transformative experience for me. I wasn’t formally part of the Finance Lab from the start — I only began auditing its second half once I had built a foundation in accounting and finance terminology. But even in that short time, it completely reshaped how I think about finance.

It reminded me of the TV show House MD. In the show, no matter how many diagnostic tests were run, the real answer always came down to understanding the patient’s character and context. Finance, I realized, operates the same way. You can build all the models and crunch all the numbers you want, but the real insight lies in the motivations and incentives of the stakeholders involved.

For a finance novice like me, the sheer amount of value I extracted from just four sessions of Finance Lab was immeasurable. It reframed my understanding of finance—not as an abstract, technical discipline, but as a deeply human endeavor, driven by behavior, trade-offs, and incentives.

What is the most “Oxford” thing you have done so far as a full-time MBA student? A common answer is the matriculation ceremony. While that was certainly memorable, I had the rare opportunity to experience my MSc graduation ceremony within the second month of my MBA, and it definitely one-ups the grandeur of the matriculation ceremony.

Oxford is known as a place where world collides, be it in the classroom or the dining hall. What has been the most interesting interaction you’ve had so far as an Oxford MBA student? One of the most surreal moments was discovering that my academic advisor for the year was Sir Adrian Hill, one of the inventors of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Over the next few months, I also attended lectures by Dame Sarah Gilbert and Sir Andrew Pollard, the other two lead inventors of the vaccine. As someone working in global health and drug development, it was incredible to hear firsthand from the very people who shaped one of the most significant medical breakthroughs of our time.

Then, another collision happened. I found out that my college advisor’s former co-founder is now the CEO of Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs — the generics drug company that has disrupted the U.S. healthcare system. I had been trying to collaborate with them for years for Open Source Pharma because generics manufacturers have a huge incentive to help develop more open IP drugs.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: I am a founding member and the entrepreneur-in-residence of the Open Source Pharma Foundation — arguably the only global nonprofit in the Global South dedicated to drug and vaccine development for neglected diseases.

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, our advisors initially suggested that we sit this one out, given that high-income countries were also affected — ensuring that major pharmaceutical companies would step in. But we quickly recognized a growing inequity in global access. We knew that if we didn’t act, the same hoarding mindset that had long plagued neglected disease research would re-emerge.

So, we pivoted. Using our innovative yet frugal technologies, we managed to place three COVID-19 vaccines and one drug into Phase 3 trials — rivaling the combined efforts of several major pharmaceutical companies. It was a testament to an open, non-profit approach.

Describe your biggest accomplishment as an MBA student so far? I think it was definitely being inducted as a fundamental analyst in the Alpha Fund – a student led public equities investment group. Three months ago, I didn’t even know what financial leverage or discounting meant. Fast forward, and I was analyzing whether a company’s intrinsic value was higher or lower than its current market price — making real investment decisions.

Just months ago, I wouldn’t have imagined myself debating valuation models or discussing competitive moats in different industries. Yet, here I was.

What has been the biggest epiphany you’ve gained about yourself or the world since you started your MBA program? I’ve realized that I thrive in the intersections where “health and social equity” meet “financial equity”.

I always knew I cared about financing global health solutions, but I never expected to enjoy finance itself. The MBA has shown me that I don’t just tolerate the tension between mission-driven work and commercial realities—I thrive in it.

The more I learn about how investment decisions are made, what investors prioritize, and what levers exist to nudge those decisions, the more I see the immense opportunity to bridge these worlds.

This realization has reframed how I see my role in the world — not just as someone who navigates the divide between health and finance, but as someone uniquely positioned to bridge that gap and redefine what’s possible.

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