Oz Medicann Group chief executive Rohit Bhuta speaks about his shift from three decades in corporate finance to leading a medicinal cannabis biotech company.
Over a 30-year career in finance, Rohit Bhuta accumulated the kind of professional passport most executives only dream of.
He worked across India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa and beyond, taking on senior positions — four of them as chief executive — largely within the Macquarie Bank network.
Yet even as he guided clients toward financial growth, Bhuta found himself increasingly unsettled by a stark reality: the profound gap between those with means and those without.
That growing awareness, however indirect, set him on a path toward a new chapter — one that led to his appointment as chief executive of Oz Medicann Group (OMG).
"My journey across eight countries has afforded me the privilege of immersing myself in diverse cultures, environments and lifestyles. These experiences have been profoundly enlightening," Bhuta reflects. "The disparity in wealth in countries like South Africa and India is especially jarring.
"While many of us live in a bubble of comfort, in these regions, inequality is a reality that surrounds you, compelling a deep desire to effect change. The real challenge lies in discerning how to make a meaningful impact and where to initiate that effort."
Those encounters across the globe gradually shaped his conviction that the health sector was where he needed to be.
"It seems as if every step of my career has been a preparation for this moment, enabling me to contribute to a company like Oz Medicann where I can genuinely impact lives," he says. "The transition marked an evolution in my professional journey, from the realm of finance to the pursuit of safeguarding and enhancing human health."
Contagious passion
Bhuta was born in Fiji, and his first move abroad came at 17 when he relocated to New Zealand to attend Wellington College, before going on to study at Victoria University in the same city.
"Transitioning from the Fiji tropics to the cold windswept landscape of Wellington was a significant adjustment in the early years," Bhuta recalls. "While challenging, it was during this period that my resilience began to form."
Armed with a bachelor of commerce and administration, and a clear talent for finance and accounting, he joined E&Y as an auditor — the starting point of a three-decade career in financial consulting and wealth creation.
In 2022, a mutual friend introduced Bhuta to OMG founder John Leith. The connection was immediate, with Leith drawn to Bhuta's leadership track record, cultural awareness and broad business experience.
An invitation to join the firm's advisory board followed shortly after, and six months later, in January 2023, he stepped into the CEO role.
"I quickly and deeply immersed myself in the business," Bhuta says.
“It seems as if every step of my career has been a preparation for this moment, enabling me to contribute to a company like Oz Medicann where I can genuinely impact lives.”
Rohit bhuta
While Leith had been impressed by Bhuta's international leadership history, Bhuta is equally clear about what drew him to OMG's mission.
"John's passion and his dedication to what he and the company is doing is contagious," he said in an interview. "He talked so passionately about putting patients above profits, and how people should get access to medicine all the time, any time and everywhere. It resonated with me."
International perspective
Beyond his leadership experience, Bhuta brought something else to the role: a well-developed understanding of how to operate across international markets.
He has taken direct responsibility for the global commercialisation of OMG's product range.
With several clinical trials in the pipeline targeting sleep, anxiety and pain, OMG is looking well beyond Australia as it pursues access to international markets.
The company has already reached an agreement with Europe-based research and development firm DSM Firmenich to investigate the therapeutic potential of orally dispersible CBD tablets, which OMG hopes will eventually become an over-the-counter product.
Further agreements are being developed.
"We are essentially forming strategic partnerships in key markets where we aim to operate and distribute," Bhuta explains.
Acceptance
Given his finance background, Bhuta had little prior exposure to medicinal cannabis before joining OMG. Like many people unfamiliar with the subject, he had not appreciated the plant's potential therapeutic applications — a view that changed quickly through his early conversations with Leith.
"It was only when I started learning a little more about the research and development and all the work Oz Medicann was doing that I realised I had initially viewed it entirely the wrong way," he admits.
"It's now me trying to destigmatise medicinal cannabis. Of course stigma still exists, but it is undeniable medicinal cannabis is gaining acceptance. We must continue to educate doctors and patients so there is a pull and push effect. The aim must be to transition from stigma to acceptance to inclusion so more people can access and benefit from its life-changing properties."
One concern does weigh on him, however: the seemingly inevitable push toward full legalisation.
In views that are widely shared within the research fraternity, Bhuta worries about what an adult-use market could mean for clinical trials and the broader research effort. Without that work continuing, the therapeutic benefits of cannabis — especially the minor cannabinoids that show considerable promise — may never be fully understood.
"My personal opinion is that we shouldn't go down that path, not yet anyway," he says. "If we do, if we go in too quickly, we'll lose so much momentum that we've built around research.
"We've seen it in the US and Canada. As soon as it was legalised, the amount of money invested in research decreased. We need to be in a situation where companies are still motivated to spend money on research to further grow the body of evidence for medicinal cannabis."
Whatever the outcome of that debate, Bhuta and the OMG team remain focused on developing effective medicines. Research, he says, is central to the company's identity.
"It's one of the things that attracted me from the outset. We are a biotech company and our focus has always been on product innovation, research and development.
"We will continue that focus, and our clinical trials for an over-the-counter CBD sleep tablet, and two other concurrent trials for chronic pain and women's health, are great examples of that. We want to develop something that is going to truly make a difference to patients' lives."
For Bhuta personally, the move from finance to healthcare has been as rewarding as it has been purposeful.
"I am enjoying the opportunity to apply the personal skills I've honed over the years to a new industry," he says. "The chance to make a meaningful impact on the lives of others is not only rewarding but deeply inspiring.
"The personal challenge has been to leverage my lifelong learning and leadership skills to effect real change in the world and drive progress in a new field. I'm loving every moment of it."
