PharmStars

Settle the SAFE question before anything else

PharmStars accepts startups from any country, but only from countries where a SAFE is a recognised legal instrument, because every graduate is paid its investment that way. It publishes no country list and says nothing about India. Ask PharmStars directly whether they have taken an Indian-incorporated company before and on what instrument, and ask your own lawyer what an Indian company can receive from a US fund. Do this first: if the answer is no, nothing else about the application matters.

Then be honest about fit

The whole programme is about selling to large global pharma. It is worth applying if pharma research, clinical, medical affairs or commercial teams are the buyers you are chasing, and it is not worth applying if your customers are Indian hospitals, insurers or patients. Check the theme too. Each cohort has one, set with the member companies, and your product has to sit inside it rather than merely nearby.

Plan for Boston and for the time difference

Two events are in person in Boston and attendance is required from the chief executive and one other representative, with exceptions only for illness or something similarly unforeseen. Budget for visas and two trips for two people; the programme does not offer travel or visa support. Live classes run twice a week on US Eastern afternoons, which is late evening in India, for ten weeks, on top of a weekly mentoring slot. Make sure the two people you are sending can actually hold that schedule.

Get the team right on paper

You must commit at least two and up to four people who are full-time employees, not consultants, and senior enough to negotiate and sign a pharma contract. Name them in the application and say what each will do. A solo founder application will not clear this bar.

How applications work

The Apply tab only exists on the site while a window is open, so check the home page for the next cohort's dates rather than looking for a permanent link. There is no fee to apply. The form has to be finished in one sitting because it cannot be saved as a draft, but a downloadable copy is offered so you can write your answers first and paste them in. You cannot amend or withdraw after submitting, so proofread before you send.

After that the process moves fast and has money attached at each step. Semi-finalists are told by email on a rolling basis and then have three working days to return a signed acknowledgement of the terms and pay a refundable participation deposit. Finalists are told by a stated date and have two working days to confirm and pay a tuition deposit. From India that means having someone able to sign and pay internationally at short notice, so arrange it before you hear back rather than after.

What selection weighs

Startups are chosen by PharmStars staff alone. Three things are stated: fit, meaning a promising innovation in that cohort's theme; product stage, meaning a built product or a working prototype pharma could adopt immediately rather than something still being designed; and need, meaning you have not yet engaged pharma broadly and successfully and would therefore gain from the teaching and coaching. That third one is unusual and worth reading carefully, because a company already deep in pharma relationships is arguably too advanced for the programme rather than too junior.

Read the terms before you commit

This is a paid programme and the investment you receive on completion is a SAFE, not a grant. Completion itself is defined: attendance at most of the classes and mentoring, finishing the recorded videos, producing a pitch deck PharmStars approves, and pitching at the showcase. Read what the discount and the follow-on right mean for your cap table, and have your lawyer look at the side letter terms before you sign anything.

PharmStars is a private accelerator in the United States for digital health startups that want pharma and biotech companies as clients or partners. It runs one programme, a ten-week course called PharmaU, twice a year, and is paid for by the pharma companies that join as members and by tuition from the startups it selects. It was set up by Naomi Fried, who is chief executive, with Shrawan Patel as head mentor, and its two in-person events are held in Boston, Massachusetts.

What this means for an Indian founder

PharmStars has no office, programme, staff or partner in India, and no Indian government recognition or funding of any kind. It is a foreign programme an Indian company is allowed to apply to, not one built for India. Its own terms say that any startup, wherever it is located, may apply, and it says that on average about forty per cent of the startups it accepts have been headquartered outside the United States. Its alumni list does not give a country for any graduate, so it cannot be told from the site whether an India-based company has been through it.

There is one gate that turns on your country, and it is not about India specifically. Every graduate is paid an investment in the form of a SAFE, and PharmStars states that only startups from countries where a SAFE is a recognised legal instrument will be accepted. It publishes no list of qualifying countries and does not mention India anywhere. Whether an Indian-incorporated company can take a SAFE from a US fund is a question for your own counsel and for PharmStars, and it is the first thing to settle before you spend time on an application.

Three practical costs matter as much as the rule. Attendance in Boston is required twice, at the launch event and at the closing showcase, for the chief executive and one other person; that means US visas and two round trips for two people, and nothing on the site offers travel or visa help. The live classes run on Monday and Thursday afternoons US Eastern time, which over a September to November cohort falls late in the evening in India, plus a weekly mentoring slot. And the programme charges tuition, so this is something you buy rather than something you win.

The last question is fit. Everything here is built around selling to large global pharma companies. If your buyers are Indian hospitals, insurers, diagnostic chains or patients rather than pharma research and commercial teams, the curriculum and the introductions will not reach the people you need, whatever your eligibility.

How the accelerator works

Ten startups are taken per cohort, one cohort in the spring and one in the autumn. Each cohort has a theme chosen with the pharma members: the autumn 2026 theme is digital innovations in immunology, and earlier ones covered clinical trials, neurological disease, real-world evidence, women's health and health equity, therapeutic delivery, oncology, rare disease, and data management.

The ten weeks open with a two-day launch event in Boston, then run virtually. The teaching part, PharmaU, mixes recorded videos with live classes on how drugs are developed, how a pharma company is structured internally, pharma business models, the regulatory drivers behind them, how pharma-startup deals are put together, and where the industry is heading. Alongside it each startup gets weekly one-to-one coaching from PharmStars staff and mentor advisors, who are former pharma executives and digital health specialists, and every team finishes with a rebuilt pitch aimed at a pharma audience. During the cohort there are fireside chats and panels with the people who champion the programme inside each member company. It closes with the startup showcase in Boston, where each team pitches to members, investors and sponsors and holds pre-arranged private meetings with member firms.

Who can apply

PharmStars defines a digital health startup as one using technology, hardware or software, to deliver care or information to patients or providers, and welcomes software, devices, AI and machine learning, and tech-enabled services. You need a prototype or a product that pharma could adopt now, and it must relate to that cohort's theme. Startups from pre-seed through Series B have taken part. Applicants must be over eighteen. Startups that already have pharma customers and startups that have been through other accelerators are both welcome.

The team requirement is firm. You must send at least two and up to four representatives, all full-time employees rather than consultants, senior enough to negotiate and sign contracts with pharma clients, and they take part throughout. The chief executive and one other representative are expected in Boston in person at both events.

What you pay and what you get back

This is a paid programme. There is no fee to apply, but semi-finalists must pay a refundable participation deposit at short notice, and accepted startups pay a tuition deposit with the balance due at the end. In return, every startup that completes the programme receives an investment from the PharmStars Ventures Fund as an uncapped SAFE with a discount that increases the longer it stays outstanding, and the tuition balance can be paid out of that investment. No equity is taken at entry; the SAFE converts into shares at a later equity round or liquidity event, so the dilution is future and conditional. The fund keeps a right, not an obligation, to follow on in later rounds. The site discloses that the fund's general partners are PharmStars' own chief executive and head mentor.

Scale and track record

PharmStars says it has completed ten cohorts and graduated 112 startups, with a graduation rate of ninety-nine per cent and more than a hundred pharma deals among its first thirty-five graduates. Its own pages do not quite agree on the arithmetic: cohorts are described as ten startups each, which over ten cohorts would be about a hundred, while the graduate count is 112. All of these are the company's own figures, published without a date. Named graduates include Infermedica, DataJoint, Superbio.AI, Manta Cares, uMed, Biostrap, Centaur Labs and viO HealthTech.

Who runs it and who backs it

Naomi Fried is founder and chief executive and Shrawan Patel is co-founder and head mentor; both are also general partners of the venture fund. Meredith Cohen is programme and projects manager, Justine Dees is director of marketing and Madeline Coyle is director of operations. The pharma member companies named on the site are Boehringer Ingelheim, Eli Lilly and Company, Novo Nordisk and Takeda. Members help choose each cohort's theme but take no part in picking the startups.

How to apply and where to look

Applications open only for a window before each cohort, through an Apply tab that appears on the main menu while that window is open. There is no standing application link, and no tab was live when this page was checked because the autumn 2026 window had closed. PharmStars publishes no postal address and no phone number, so the routes in are the web form and its general enquiries inbox. The site also carries a careers and opportunities page and a page of past showcase events.