Harmeetpal Singh Bindra and the business of joining things up

In April 2013, Harmeet Bindra announced an acquisition in Vancouver. Leixir Lab Group of Canada was buying Fine Arts Dental Laboratories. There was a new owner, but Barry Morley, the laboratory’s president, would remain in charge. The announcement paired the buyer’s technology with the existing team’s technical knowledge. Expansion arrived with a familiar face still at the helm.

It is a useful opening scene for Harmeetpal Singh Bindra’s business story. The transaction brought together two things that can sit awkwardly across a negotiating table: the desire to build something larger and the value of what already exists. Fine Arts kept its name and its leadership. Leixir added another business to a network that would stretch across borders.

A company can acquire a laboratory on paper. Making that laboratory part of a working network is a different assignment. There are people, equipment, customer relationships and ways of doing things to connect. Bindra’s public account of Leixir repeatedly returned to that connecting work. His vocabulary was full of processes, integration and technology. The glamour department would have had to make its own arrangements.

By April 2021, when Comvest Partners invested, the arrangement had a clear geographic shape: five laboratories in the United States, plus a digital design and manufacturing facility in Gurugram. Bindra remained CEO and executive chairman at the time of the investment. The business he had assembled made a case for keeping local operations close to customers while connecting them to capabilities farther away.

Singapore came before the laboratories

Bindra had worked across borders before. He founded Singapore-based IT services firm Soltius Technologies, an earlier chapter that helps explain the sequence of his career without requiring a conversion myth. Software services came first. A network of laboratories came later. Both businesses involved coordinating specialized work across more than one place.

In January 2007, Teledata Informatics announced an agreement to acquire all of Soltius through its Dubai subsidiary, Bitech International. Soltius had more than 800 professionals worldwide and focused on SAP projects and consulting. Its operations extended across nine countries, including Singapore, India, Indonesia, Australia and the United States. This was already a business with a substantial international operating footprint.

Its service list included systems integration, implementation, development and outsourcing. The acquisition announcement named Bindra and Sachin Agarwal as promoters who would join Teledata Technology Solutions as full-time directors after a demerger. It offers a concrete marker in Bindra’s earlier career: he had helped build an enterprise whose work required different systems and organizations to cooperate.

Bindra returned to India in 2010. A BITS Pilani alumnus from the 1993 graduating year, he subsequently developed Leixir’s laboratory business. An early Leixir partnership brochure placed the move into the sector in 2012 and identified Mangesh Sholapure as his business partner. The brochure’s proposition was to bring people and technology together within a common operating platform.

A network needs more than a shopping list

The Vancouver acquisition showed how that proposition could appear in practice. Fine Arts would continue under Morley while gaining access to additional technology, products and techniques. The combination was presented as a way to expand the business through the existing team. The person who knew the operation was staying with the operation.

In August 2014, Leixir announced Series A funding from IvyCap Ventures. Bindra described standardized processes across interconnected laboratories and a hub-and-spoke model combining customer contact, technology and efficiencies of scale. His ambition was operational as much as financial: a group of acquired businesses should have a way to work together.

The distinction matters when reading his career. A list of acquisitions tells us what changed hands. An operating model tells us what the buyer proposed to do with them. Bindra’s explanation supplied the second half. The laboratories would remain points of contact in North America, with India taking a role in the work that could be organized centrally.

Vikram Gupta, IvyCap’s founder and managing partner, emphasized Leixir’s ability to acquire and integrate businesses. That was the connection between the capital and the company’s next steps. Funding could support expansion, while the integration model supplied a reason to believe the expanding collection could function as a group. A larger address book, by itself, would have been a rather expensive achievement.

“This transaction represents an important milestone for Leixir.”Harmeet Bindra · April 2021

Knight adds a Florida anchor

Another acquisition gave the network a more defined American center. In January 2015, Knight Dental Group announced that it had sold its laboratory solutions business to Leixir Holdings. Knight was based in Oldsmar, Florida, and had been operating since 1972. Its customers were spread across 25 states. Leixir was adding a business with its own history and reach.

The announcement designated Knight as Leixir Lab Group’s headquarters and center of technical competency. That made the transaction more than another pin on a map. An acquired company was being assigned a role within the wider organization. The network needed places that could do particular jobs, as well as places that could serve particular markets.

Bindra said the addition would expand market share and broaden the range of solutions offered to customers. Knight’s leaders, Warren Rogers and Barbara Wojdan, described the opportunity in terms of resources, brand expansion and growth. Their comments give the transaction a two-sided character: Leixir gained an established operation, and Knight joined a network with a wider geographic plan.

Five laboratories, one Indian design center

The 2021 investment announcement brought the pieces into one picture. Comvest joined a company serving independent businesses, larger service organizations, and technology and distribution companies. Its footprint combined five US laboratories with the Gurugram facility. The model’s international dimension was visible in the locations themselves, rather than confined to an ambitious adjective in a presentation.

One piece of software also drew attention: MyLabConnect, the company’s proprietary end-to-end case-management platform. Comvest’s Marshall Griffin singled it out alongside Leixir’s digital capabilities. For a founder whose earlier company had worked in systems integration, software remained part of the story. This time it supported the coordination of a network with physical production facilities.

“This transaction represents an important milestone for Leixir,” Bindra said. He credited the team’s growth and welcomed Comvest’s resources and collaborative approach. The statement was about the next stage of the business, rather than a personal victory lap. The founder was continuing in his operating and board roles as the new investor came aboard.

IvyCap announced the sale of its stake that month, reporting a fourfold return. The figure belongs to the investor’s exit, and says something specific about that investment. Alongside the laboratory footprint and the software platform, it marks a change in the company’s financing history. An early backer was leaving; a new financial partner was joining.

Helping choose the next chief executive

The next change was closer to Bindra’s own desk. In January 2022, Leixir announced Christian LeBrun as CEO, effective January 17. Bindra would continue as executive chairman. LeBrun came from Aspen Dental, where he had spent 15 years working on laboratory operations and technology. The appointment put day-to-day leadership with an executive who knew the operating environment.

Bindra helped lead the search. He also described a longstanding relationship with LeBrun through the latter’s work at Aspen. That detail gives the succession a personal connection: the incoming executive was someone the founder already knew professionally. The decision joined a change in responsibility with continuity in an existing business relationship.

Bindra highlighted LeBrun’s understanding of laboratory operations and the priorities of the people doing and commissioning the work. His welcome placed service, innovation and relationships together. Those priorities fit the earlier acquisition story, where technology was being introduced alongside established teams. The language had shifted from assembling the network to choosing someone to run it.

The board thanked Bindra for executing the vision behind the company and looked forward to working with him as executive chairman. A founder’s career is often narrated through launches and deals. This episode adds a different task: helping recruit a successor, then continuing with a changed remit. It belongs in the chronology as much as an acquisition does.

A different seat, a continuing role

In January 2024, Leixir appointed John Krier as CEO, effective January 2, and again identified Bindra as executive chairman. Krier brought experience spanning operations, strategy and commercial execution. Bindra’s welcome emphasized acquisitions, new-product work, customer-focused strategies and team development - a practical list of responsibilities for the next leader.

That list also offers a way to read what Bindra had built. Leixir’s development required transactions, but also people who could introduce products, manage operations and maintain customer relationships. The company’s current description still puts technology beside established craftsmanship. It continues to offer training and support alongside the services of its laboratories.

Look back from the chairman’s seat and the career has a distinctive shape. Singapore provided the software-services chapter. India and North America supplied the geography of Leixir’s network. Vancouver and Florida supplied named transactions, with named leaders and specific operating roles. The story becomes easier to understand when those places and people stay in the frame.

Bindra’s recurring business subject has been the work between the parts: acquired companies and their existing teams, local operations and a distant design facility, software and physical production, a founder and incoming executives. Each connection required more than an announcement. His career offers a useful reminder that building a company can involve joining things that already have a life of their own.