[5] After teaching himself O and A-levels, he attended University College London (UCL), where he studied civil and environmental engineering and wrote for the student newspaper Pi.

[5] During his studies Parsa co-founded Victoria & Gilan (V&G), a media promotion company for which he won the Royal Award for the Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 1993.

[6] Parsa sold V&G in 1995 to join Credit Suisse First Boston as an investment banker where he was hired by Stephen Hester, who later served as CEO of Royal Bank of Scotland.

The National Audit Office subsequently raised questions about the procurement process for the franchise, stating that the company would “have to generate savings at an unprecedented level”.

Mr Parsa had been due to give evidence at a House of Commons public accounts committee hearing on the franchising of NHS trusts the following week.

[13] The Babylon app chatbot was not entirely successful; The Times newspaper of 13 October 2019, reported that the Babylon app, which bears the NHS logo and uses artificial intelligence (AI) to identify health problems, diagnosed a 60-year-old female smoker who reports sudden onset chest pain and nausea with a panic attack or inflammation, whereas 60-year-old male smoker was diagnosed with a heart attack.

[16] In October 2021, Parsa led Babylon into floating on the NYSE, later calling his decision an "unbelievable, unmitigated disaster"[17] after the share price collapsed from $272.50 at flotation to below $1.