Kavita Oberoi
Most service businesses never make the jump from a founder selling on relationships to a company that wins enterprise contracts and keeps them. The ones that do tend to share a pattern: a sharp read on where a regulated buyer is failing its own internal customers, and the discipline to build a delivery operation that survives the first big contract rather than collapses under it. Leaders rarely get a candid account of how that transition actually happens.
Kavita Oberoi OBE is a British entrepreneur and founder of Oberoi Consulting who helps organisations and aspiring founders understand how to build a regulated-sector services business from a single contract into a sustained operation.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Kavita Oberoi
- A first-hand account of selling into the NHS and global pharma as an outsider, including the specific moves that turned a Pfizer pilot into a multi-client healthcare consultancy.
- An OBE-recognised entrepreneur who is candid about the parts of company building that most founders gloss over: pricing the first big contract, hiring before revenue, and surviving the move from founder-led sales to a delivery team.
- A public profile shaped by The Secret Millionaire and ongoing BBC, Sky and ITV business commentary, which translates into audience trust before she opens her mouth.
- Genuine credibility on the diversity-and-resilience angle without the usual abstractions, drawing on a documented path from a 15-year-old taking a Saturday job against family expectation to chairing the Global Girls’ Fund.
Biography highlights
- OBE for services to entrepreneurship and start-up businesses, Queen’s 2014 Birthday Honours.
- Founder and Managing Director of Oberoi Consulting, healthcare IT and clinical audit firm working with the NHS and pharmaceutical industry since 2001.
- Founder of Oberoi Business Hub, Derby’s Pride Park, serviced and virtual office facility for start-ups, opened 2012.
- Named in the 2009 HBOS report on Britain’s 100 Most Entrepreneurial Women.
- Chair of the Global Girls’ Fund, the international fundraising arm of Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting.
- Honorary Doctorate, University of Huddersfield, 2013; BSc Applied Chemistry, First Class, University of Huddersfield, 1992.
- Television: Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire, BBC’s The Apprentice You’re Fired, ITV News Business Club panellist, BBC Breakfast, Sky News.
Biography
The clinical audit gap inside UK general practice was the opening Kavita Oberoi spotted in 2001. GP surgeries needed structured data work that pharmaceutical companies and the NHS both wanted, and almost nobody was packaging it as a service. From a standing start she won a contract with Pfizer, and Oberoi Consulting grew from there into a healthcare support business serving GP practices, primary care groups, private healthcare providers and global pharma.
The route to that point matters because it shapes what she actually says on stage. A first-class chemistry degree from Huddersfield, then a stint as one of Bayer’s highest-performing medical representatives, gave her the technical credibility to sell into clinical buyers. Leaving a corporate salary at 30 to start a consultancy without a network or a war chest gave her the rest.
In 2012 she opened Oberoi Business Hub on Derby’s Pride Park, a serviced and virtual office facility built specifically for start-ups and small companies that need infrastructure they cannot yet afford to own. The wider portfolio now spans healthcare consultancy, shared workspace, commercial property and media work, and earned her an OBE in 2014 for services to entrepreneurship and start-up businesses.
She chairs the Global Girls’ Fund, the international fundraising body of Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting, set up the Derby Breakfast Club to feed children before school, and was named in the 2009 HBOS report on Britain’s 100 Most Entrepreneurial Women. Her Channel 4 Secret Millionaire episode put a lot of that work in front of a national audience and continues to drive board, charity and conference invitations across the UK.
Key speaking topics
- Building a services business in a regulated sector
- Founder-led sales into NHS and pharmaceutical buyers
- Scaling beyond the first major contract
- Entrepreneurship and start-up infrastructure
- Women in business and overcoming cultural barriers
- Philanthropy and corporate giving
Ideal for
- Founders, owner-managers and aspiring entrepreneurs inside accelerator, incubator or membership programmes
- Sales and growth leaders selling complex services into healthcare, pharma or public-sector buyers
- Diversity and women-in-leadership audiences inside FTSE and professional services firms
- Awards hosting and after-dinner addresses where the brief is credibility plus warmth, not theoretical content
Audience outcomes
- A clear-eyed view of how a single enterprise contract can be turned into a sustainable services company, with the operational moves named.
- The questions a founder should be answering before they leave a corporate salary, drawn from someone who actually made that jump.
- A practical sense of what selling into the NHS and global pharma looks like from the supplier side, and where most start-ups misread the buyer.
- Renewed confidence in personal agency for audiences whose backgrounds are not typically reflected on the founder stage.