Pivot Bio appoints industry veteran to lead manufacturing & supply chain

Pivot Bio, Inc., a sustainable agriculture company delivering farmers patented crop nutrition technologies that harness the power of nature to reliably and productively grow the food the world needs, has named Balaji Venkataraman Senior Vice President of Manufacturing and Supply Chain to lead in-house and third-party manufacturing, supply chain and procurement. He will report to the company’s President and COO, Lisa Safarian.

″Balaji brings decades of expertise as a global operations leader – transforming supply chains, working with teams to deliver operational excellence, and optimizing processes to improve safety and profitability,″ said Safarian. ″I’m thrilled to welcome him to the team as Pivot Bio embarks on a new phase of growth.″

Venkataraman joins Pivot Bio following a series of future-focused investments the company made in 2023, which include:

• A new 48,000-square-foot facility in St. Louis for the development, production and manufacturing of Pivot Bio’s latest product and its first-ever on-seed nitrogen technology, PROVEN® 40 OS and RETURN® OS.

• A new 110,000-square-foot distribution center in Omaha, Nebraska, that will enable the company to deliver climate-smart nitrogen to growers throughout the Corn Belt and Western U.S. faster and at scale.

• A new state-of-the-art facility in the Iowa State University Research Park, which will serve as a Midwest hub for technical expertise, product information and personalized customer support, enabling farmers to maximize the benefits of Pivot Bio solutions.

• The addition of a new packaging line at the company’s first distribution center in Chicago.

Venkataraman comes to Pivot Bio from Corteva Agriscience where he was Vice President of Global Operations. Prior to that, he held a variety of manufacturing leadership roles across Dow companies including the Agriculture Division of DowDuPont and Dow Chemical in the U.S. and India. Venkataraman is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and will work from the company’s Berkeley office.