Mahiben Maruthappu

Mahiben Maruthappu (born 1988, also known as Ben Maruthappu) is a British physician, entrepreneur, academic researcher, health policy specialist, and the founder and chief executive of Cera, the UK's largest healthtech company. In 2025, its annualized revenue was $500 million.

Prior to Cera, Maruthappu co-founded the National Health Service (NHS) Innovation Accelerator (NIA), a programme intended to accelerate the adoption of new healthcare technologies, and served as NHS England's Innovation Adviser. He was also the founder and first president of the United Kingdom Medical Students' Association (UKMSA). He has contributed to more than 100 academic papers in peer-reviewed journals. He has been listed as one of WIRED's 10 Innovators in Healthcare, and was named in the 2015 Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

In 2025, Maruthappu appeared in the Sunday Times list of the 40 Richest People Under 40, with a net worth of £123 million.

Early life and education Maruthappu was born in London in 1988 to Sri Lankan Tamils parents. He studied preclinical medicine at Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a triple first class,

Career Medical practice Maruthappu began his career as a physician at Ealing Hospital in 2013. He later practised at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and then trained in Public Health. In 2014, he was appointed scholar at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, where he focused on the use of structured feedback in surgery.

NHS Policy In 2014, Maruthappu became the first appointed Senior Fellow to the Chief Executive Officer of NHS England, Simon Stevens.

Whilst at the National Health Service, Maruthappu advised on innovation, technology and prevention, and in 2015, he co-founded the NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA), a programme aimed at spreading technologies across the health service, that also led to the development of the first NHS Innovation Tariff, a national reimbursement mechanism for medical technologies and digital health products.

He co-founded the NHS's £450 million Workplace Wellness Programme and the Diabetes Prevention Programme (DPP) which, as of 2017, had been rolled out to half of the population in England.

Entrepreneurship After his mother fell and fractured part of her back, Maruthappu and his sister faced difficulties in arranging required home care. In 2016, he founded Cera. In its early days, the company started out as an on-demand digital platform to match people seeking in-home assistance with professional carers, allowing families to keep updated on a patient's progress. Maruthappu has been acknowledged for his role in reducing NHS costs and building a more sustainable future for health and social care, including by The Times and Sunday Times, The Telegraph, and City AM.

Boards and affiliations Maruthappu was formerly a Board Member of NHS North West London Integrated Care Board (covering a population of over 2 million people) and of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, one of the UK's largest NHS Trusts, with £1.2 billion turnover. He was also formerly a Board Member for Skills for Care, the national body for the UK's 1.5 million care workforce– a workforce Maruthappu has helped to grow, attracting 1 million new carer and nurse applicants to Cera in 2 years.

Maruthappu is a member of the advisory board for HealthTechDigital. Hewrites for The Times, and The Guardian, and has lectured undergraduate students at Cambridge University since the age of 20.

Awards and recognition Sunday Times Rich List 2025: 40 Under 40 Great British Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2023 (Overall Winner) Maruthappu was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to Health and Social Care technology, becoming the youngest doctor to receive the honour. WIRED's 10 Innovators in Healthcare (2016) Forbes 30 under 30 list (2015)

He also partook in the 2017 study demonstrating that health & social care funding constraints in England were linked to 120,000 excess deaths; a so called "mortality gap".