Bangalore
Abhinav Jain, Alutum Managment Solutions
Abhinav is a co-founder at Alitum Management Solutions, an organization dedicated towards democratic decision-making processes and organizational alignment to help companies manage their scaling-up process. Apart from his interests towards performance management, he is a passionate serial entrepreneur who has started two technology ventures since his undergraduate years. During his entrepreneurial pursuits, he handled multiple roles from strategy to product management to marketing and client delivery. Prior to this, he worked with Mentor Graphics (an electronics design and automation company) at their research center in Noida, being responsible for designing algorithms for circuit visualizations. Abhinav holds an MBA from Indian Institute of ManagementBangaloreand Bachelors in Computer Engineering from ITBHU Varanasi. During his MBA, he was a part of the consulting club and worked with companies across multiple sectors while handing treasury and business development roles. He enjoys talking to people and loves to read about business and technology. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Abhinav Sarangi, Priceshred.com
Abhinav Sarangi is the Co-founder & CEO of PriceShred.com which deals with online buying & selling. With innovative ideas he oversees the marketing activities & heads the product development. Prior to that, he worked as the Supporting Executive Director and Head-HR at ONGC Mehsana. He devised a business plan for Aditya Birla Group,Egyptto enter the Silane business which further led to a joint venture with a Chinese company of NPV of $ 700,000. A Marketing plan was devised & implemented for the Global Silica business. He spearheaded a project of multinational team in Material Process of a Swedish organization. At ICC Lucknow, he developed a new Recruitment & Selection policy and a new Performance Management. He thoroughly exhibits coordinating & leadership skills which are an asset. Abhinav did B.TECH Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from IIT Roorkee & holds PGDM from IIM Lucknow. Being a literary person, he likes to read & write short stories. Dostoevsky & Kafka are his favorite fictional authors. He loves adventure & likes trekking & traveling. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Abhishek Mathur, BVM Infotech
He is the Co–owner & VP of BVM InfoTech. He designed an analytical tool to compute ROI on Digital Marketing across channels. He was the Manager for Aryaka Network. He invested his Engineering skills in Google to identify trends on Web Search and has designed Information Systems to serve throughMobile. He was awarded the Peer Bonus for outstanding contribution to the Google Adwords Billing Platform. Abhishek is a rank holder of Indian National Mathematics Olympiad. He completed his MBA fromIndianSchoolof Business,Hyderabadand was the Flight Commander, Air Wing NCC where he led a team of 70 cadets in one of the Camps. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program inBangalore.
Ajith Karimpana, Rent Ur Duniya
Ajith Karimpana is the founder of Rent Ur Duniya, a home furnishing rental service provider. Prior to Rent Ur Duniya, he worked at Goldman Sachs as Vice President and was managing the Asia Regulatory Operations Technology team out ofIndia. Ajith has also worked at Morgan Stanley and Infosys. He is an expert in the technology management with focus on the Investment Banking domain. Ajith was awarded certificate of merit and medal of honor at REC/NIT Jalandhar for being one of the toppers in the college. He holds a Masters degree in Computer Science fromTempleUniversityand Bachelors degree in Industrial Engineering from REC/NIT Jalandhar. Ajith is an avid reader, an amateur photographer and a music aficionado. He is a 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program inBangalore. Ajith has been a passionate part-time entrepreneur for the past three years and had co-founded a venture (Rhydoo.com) in theUnited Statesthat was into group buying, a novel idea then (2007-08), but stale now. He is passionately pursuing his ambition to build Rent UrDuniya as the brand for Home Furnishing Rentals inIndiafor people on the move and with temporary needs. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program inBangalore.
Akhil Gupta,Moontara
Akhil is the Co-founder & CEO of Moontara, a start-up that aims to digitize in-store advertising. Prior to Moontara, he worked at SamsungIndiafor four years, where he worked on several next generation mobile technologies acrossUSA,South KoreaandEurope. He led the engineering team that commercialized the World’s First Video Telephony for CDMA networks inSouth Koreain 2007. He recently graduated from Indian Institute of Management,Bangalore, where he specialized in Marketing & Strategy. He also holds a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology,Kanpur. He is a big, big fan of music – one of the biggest reasons why he lovesBangalorefor all the live gigs and music scene here. In fact, in his final year of under gradutation, when he came to know that there as a Mark Knopfler concert on next day, he hitchhiked from Kanpur to Mumbai covering 1200+ km on trains, trucks and random vehicles overnight. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Alan D’Souza, Vavia Technologies
At the age of 13, Alan started off as a Corporate Brand Designer, designing logos and corporate stationary. He went on to learn new technologies such as HTML and PHP, and designed his first HTML website at 14. Alan went on to win several Web Design competitions there on, and started freelancing when he joined engineering college at PESIT Bangalore. Alan developed dynamic Web Portals using Joomla!, Drupal and WordPress which was a niche area back then, and got a chance to work with several corporations on Web Frameworks and Web Security. Vavia took a new turn on 08/08/08 at 8:08 am when the company launched its first commercial portal, and is now now designing and developing dynamic Web Applications and BI Applications using cutting edge framworks such as RoR and Python. Vavia owns and maintains commercial portals including myseopandit.com. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Annuraj Ennai, Mobiotics
Anuraj Ennai is the co-founder and CEO of mobiotics, whose mission is to ‘mobilimagineer our future’ by defining integrative mobile experiences. Mobiotics has come up with a Social TV Platform, integrating TV viewing experience with mobile devices. Mobiotics is also working on a platform to integrate physical and mobile spaces for commercial applications. Prior to founding mobiotics , Anuraj was Principal Staff Researcher at Motorola Labs where he came up with many innovations in the field of mobile internet and mobile enterprise. He has filed several patents and his work on ‘Mobile Service Oriented Architecture’ earned him best paper award at IEEE Mobile Web Services Conference, 2008. Prior to his stint as a researcher, Anuraj worked as a Technical Marketer for Motorola and authored 22 J2ME specifications. Anuraj also worked as a Mobile Applications Architect and was responsible for the first MMS client on a 3G phone in 2003. Anuraj also worked in Wipro Technologies and Infosys for brief periods before his decade long stint at Motorola. Anuraj is an acknowledged expert in large scale distributed internet architectures and mobile application platform architectures and has several large scale platforms to his credit. He holds a B.Tech in Electronics & Communication Engineering fromKeralaUniversity, an MS in Computer Science from Illinois Institute of Technology , Chicago and an executive MBA from Indian Institute of Management,Bangalore. Anuraj is an avid reader, a closet poet, a movie and music buff. He grew up reading Rilke, Kafka, dostoyevsky and listening to Bob Dylan, beatles and Queen and watching movies by Godard, Tarkovsky and Herzog and is deeply influenced by them . Anuraj is an avid soccer fan who idolizes Maradona and Zidane. He is passionate about securing an end to poverty and may consider a political stint in the future. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Arun Jagannathan, Founder, Crackverbal
Arun Jagannathan is the Founder of CrackVerbal, a startup in the test preparation space. Prior to CrackVerbal, he worked at Talisma Corporation, a CRM product company, where he was the Head of International Delivery. Arun has also worked at Arcot R&D (acquired by Computer Associates), Sapient Technologies and Wipro. He is an expert in diverse areas such as offshore delivery management, bootstrapping startups and professional career counselling. Arun holds a degree in Physics from the MS University of Baroda and an Master’s in Computer Application fromGujaratUniversity. He is a fan of trivia quizzing, and Seth Godin’s writing, and is passionate about bridging the gap between people who aspire to achieve their educational and career goals, and people who want to contribute back to society through their knowledge and professional skills. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Deepak Khetan, Khetan Groupe
Deepak Khetan is the Founder & CEO of Khetan Groupe Sourcing House, which provides sartorial high-street clothing for men. Khetan has two major brands – DAsquare, an online high-end platform and MR Button, mass market value segment. He started a youth fashion brand while pursuing his graduation atDelhiUniversity. After graduating, he moved to theUKto study design, and then stayed on as a Service Design Consultant with Worcestershire County Council, UK Public Services and with several organisations inIndia. After returning toIndia, he initiated ‘Network of Service Design inIndia’ to bring together academic organisations, professionals and enterprises to develop and strengthen the discipline in the country. He led Design and Operations team at Cheese Corporate Care (a UI design consultancy firm), before becoming an entrepreneur. Deepak holds a masters in Design Management fromBIAD,UKand a Bachelors fromDelhiUniversity. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore. Deepak is a good sportsman and has been a state-level basketball player.
Dipin K, iAccy Designs
Dipin K is a Director and Head of Sales & Operations for of iAccy Designs. He fulfilled the role of Channel Development & training to enhance the user experience at POS & set up the channel for iAccy products in Indian retail market. He achieved sales of million rupees in one month through a marketing program that he has devised. Prior to joining iAccy, he worked as the Head of Apple India Pvt. Ltd.,Bangalore where he expanded the Apple business in Media & SMB market. His proud achievement was when he brought increased business from Media markets by 400% in 3 years and was the largest contributor to AppleIndiarevenues. Dipin successfully penetrated the photography market with unique tie ups with Kodak, Konica andFuji when he worked as Product Manager at Epson. Dipin has 16 years of experience in sales and marketing & has hands on experience in setting up new businesses and channels. He completed his Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Communication from Dharwad University. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore. Dipin loves reading fiction, traveling and cooking.
Gaurav Vaish, InColeg Learning and Edujini Labs
Gaurav Vaish is the Co-Founder & CTO of InColeg Learning, a company democratizing learning by enabling social and collaborative learning through advanced but easy-to-use interfaces. Prior to InColeg, he co-founded Edujini Labs, a training and learning services company. Gaurav has also worked at Adobe Systems in their R&D team and at Transversal e Networks heading its R&D division. He is an expert in various technologies and technical frameworks, loves to design, architect and implement complex technology solutions so as to make them easy to use and comprehend, and loves to live an entrepreneurial life. During undergrad, Gaurav started a Business Club which has now grown into Entrepreurship Cell. He is also an open source evangelist and has several projects put up in open source. He is a prolific speaker and speaks at various technology and business forums in India. He holds a Bachelors Degree in Eletrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur. Like most other geeks, nerds and technocrats, Gaurav loves music and is a big fan of Kishore Kumar and Jagjit Singh. He loves to travel to his office in his bicycle. He has a personal blog at www.mastergaurav.com that he updates irregularly. Gaurav is passionate about education and has an i-m-possible mission to see people educated and learned, not just literate. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Jay Krishnan, Wifinity and Radifinity
Jay Krishnan is the Founder & CEO Radifinity, which he successfully exited through a sale in 2010. He then started Wifinity Tech in 2011. Prior to his startups, he worked at Cisco, where he ran the Global Partner Management Group and Juniper Networks, where he was the Head of APAC New Product Introduction Group. He worked inBostonfor seven years, managing and building hardware platforms for Brooktrout Technologies. Jay holds a BS in Electrical Engineering and MS Electrical Engineering from the University of Hartford, Connecticut and an Executive MBA from IIM Bangalore. He is a 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Kapil Kaushik, Sparsha Learning
Kapil Kaushik is the co-founder and VP Engineering of Sparsha Learning Technologies. Sparsha is focussed on improving the student learning by pairing “simulation and social” technologies with instructional strategies. Sparsha’s flagship product iLearnMore is being used by faculty and students to learn electronics in various universities inIndia. Sparsha was also one of the Top 20 tech startups at TechSparks 2011. Prior to Sparsha, he worked at Magma Design Automation, where he was involved in creating high end technology solutions for electronic design automation. With over 6 years of industry experience, he has been involved across the lifecycle of product development. He is also a co-founder of ISOC Bangalore chapter – a non-profit organization dedicated to spreading awareness about internet. Kapil completed his Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi. Kapil is an avid biker and trekker and is often found with his machine (Bajaj Avenger) in far off lands like Laddakh and Bhutan. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Raghuram Dharmaraju, Embrace
Raghu is an entrepreneurial leader who built new businesses and competencies in Startup, Fortune 500, R&D, and Government settings. Currently he is a Vice President at Embrace, a social enterprise that aims to help millions of vulnerable babies through a low cost infant warmer. Previously, Raghu was VP Marketing at Duron Energy, a path-breaking rural solar startup, which he helped grow from 10 to 80 people over 18 months. In the process he helped the company tide through turbulent times taking on sales, product financing, service, hiring, and training as additional responsibilities. Prior to that, he was a product manager at Corning managing a $25-$50 million global product portfolio. His experience includes working at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Centre) on commercializing a new solar technology, and advising General Electric (GE), on business models for energy/water opportunities in ruralIndia. His got his BTech from IIT Madras, MS from UMass Amherst, and MBA from Cornell, where he focused on Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital, and Sustainable Enterprise. At Cornell he was recognized for academic and leadership achievements by three faculty- and peer-nominated awards. He is a 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Rangaprasad Badasheshi, Iween
Rangaprasad Co-Founded Helix Educational Academy immediately upon graduation, and then went on to complete a Masters degree. After graduating from IIIT B, Rangaprasad worked for Start-up QSO Technologies for two years, where he headed Technology and was part of the Business Development & Marketing team, and got an opportunit to work inGermanyandFrancefor a year before returning to found Iween Software. During his Masters, he was the Technical Manager – Entrepreneurship Cell, Student Chapter and an active member of AIYKYAM, the IIIT Social Service Community. He holds a Master of Technology Degree from IIIT Bangalore and a Bachelor of Technology from JNTU,Hyderabad. He won a Scholarship award from Government of Andhra Pradesh for being District Topper in 7th, 10th and 12th Grades. He is a 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program inBangalore.
Ranjan Jagannathan, Yahoo!
Ranjan Jagannathan is currently working as Associate Program Manager at Yahoo! with a charter of fostering innovation across product groups through programs focused on directed innovation . He designed and ran one of the largest internal innovation programs that garnered a record 371 product ideas and 210+ business plans from Yahoo! India many of which made it into product roadmaps. He was also part of core team that ran one of the largest developer programs which had participants fromIndiaand across the globe, for which he won an award recently. Prior to Yahoo!, he worked at an analytics startup, TEG Analytics where he grew from a business analyst to handing sales forIndiaregion within 1 year. In this role, he successfully built and grew a partnership with Microsoft (the startup was awarded as Partner of the Year, 2011). He also played a pivotal role in bringing in deals like NikeIndiawhich was a flagship project for the company in Indian retail space.Prior to that, he was the Co-founder & Marketing head for Nova Events where he was responsible for winning several sponsorship and partnership with corporate firms. He is a state level chess player & captained the college team for 4 years. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Vishveshwaraya Technological University. He is a 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program inBangalore.
Rashmi Ranjan Padhy, Shoppers On
Rashmi Ranjan Padhy is the Founder and CEO of Shoppers On, which helps people save on their daily expenses. Following a Lean Startup methodology, Shoppers On is going to launch its MVP in the month of October. Prior to Shoppers On, he co-founded Zumali, an ecommerce company selling beauty products inUSAandCanada. Rashmi has also worked at UST Global, and Infosys Technologies Ltd. He holds a degree in BTech and pursuing Part time executive MBA. He has been a fan of Lean Startup Methodology. In Shoppers On, he is implementing the methodology during the product development. Rashmi has also been involved in building various communities and is the co-founder of Bangalore Startups, a community to help startups. Rashmi is passionate about ecommerce and wants to solve the problem of ecommerce inIndia, with his innovative approach. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program inBangalore.
Ritesh Dwivedy, Justeat.in
Ritesh Dwivedy is the CEO of justeat.in,India’s largest online food ordering portal. Ritesh has successfully raised 2 rounds of investment. Ritesh holds a degree in engineering from IIT. He is a 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Shivananda Koteshwar, Synopsys and Chowki
Shivananda R Koteshwar (Shivoo) is Mentor & Advisor to several startups including Sparsha Learning Technologies and Purpleframe Technologies, and in the process of incubating two more ideas in the learning space. Shivoo is a successful and a versatile serial entrepreneur, angel investor and mentor. He works as a Director in Synopsys, a leading EDA (Electronic Design Automation) company and has more than 16years of experience in the space. Shivoo has started a non-profit venture, Chowki to bridge the gap between the industry, academia and student community. Chowki’s members include SMEs and academia and focuses on management studies, electronics and computer science. The activities include authoring text books, creating course material, and teaching management concepts to undergraduate and graduate management students through case studies. Shivoo has completed the Advanced Management Program (AMP) at IIM Bangalore, holds an MS in VLSI from Oregon Graduate Institute, Bachelors of Technology in Electronics and Communication fromMysoreUniversityand has completed an Intellectual Property Rights Law Course atNationalLawSchool. . He is a 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Soumya Das, Quikast Technologies
Soumya Das is the co-Founder of QuiKast Technologies, a startup which is redefining the way videos are watched and shared on the go. Soumya is responsible for heading the overall execution of the company in achieving its short term to long term goals. He brings in 6 years of experience in managing and building complex software applications which are scalable and robust. He has served as a software consultant in the areas of web application and core software architecture to quite a few firms and also the Ministry of Human Resources, Government of India in architecting and deploying their virtual labs solution. Prior to founding QuiKast, Soumya was working at ArchPro (now acquired by Synopsys) where he architected their state-of-the-art low-power EDA tool from scratch and showed excellent technical leadership in driving the product from a prototype to a successful revenue earner. He has bagged special recognition awards from Synopsys for two consecutive years. Soumya started his career in embedded software development for high speed network security switch at Nevis Networks. He did his B.Tech. in Electronics and Communication Engineering from IIT Guwahati. As a voluntary activity, he also runs the Internet Society Bangalore chapter as Vice Chair and leads and motivates a handful of volunteers to execute many interesting initiatives. He is a food lover and also enjoys cooking himself and does some casual photography as well. He is a 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Swetansu Mohapatra, AlphaBeta Labs and FoodKhoj
Swetansu Mohapatra is Co-founder & Director at AlphaBeta Labs, and also a Founder of FoodKhoj. He was a freelance market analyst at Green Power Development Partners. He has received several awards including being named the NSEF Author of Change, StartingBloc Fellow, Twenty19 Student Rockstar and the Mantra-CEL Entrepreneur of the Year by the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at BITS Pilani. Swetansu received a a Masters of Science in Mathematics and a Bachelors of Chemical Engineering from BITS Pilani. He is currently working on his first book of poetry titled the The 29th Nadia. He is a 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Vinod Nair, Enzen Technologies
Vinod Nair is Founder & CEO of Enzen Technologies,India’s leading energy & utility solutions company based out ofBangalore with revenues nearing $ 100 million and employing over 1,500 professionals spread across 9 countries. This venture is now widely recognized as one of the fastest growing companies inAsia. Prior to his entrepreneurial stint, Vinod has led technology consulting, systems integration and program management engagements with leading global consulting firms across the globe. He has a proven history of assisting companies design visionary strategies and implement necessary tactics to achieve dynamic sustained growth and profitability. His experience covers a number of industries including Energy, Utilities, Engineering, Retail & Financial Services spanning Europe, US andAsia. Throughout his 16 year long career, Vinod has received a fair share of awards and accolades including IIMB Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year Award (2011), Star Entrepreneur Award (2010) and Award for Excellence in National Development (2009). He is also an invited mentor, speaker and judge at a number of IITs & IIMs. He holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Management,Bangalore, Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Fulbright-Nehru-CII Fellowship for Leadership in Management and has attended the Global Leadership Forum at CarnegieMellonUniversity. He is a 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Saurabh Mehta, IBM
Saurabh has joined IBM right after finishing engineering. He is working for IBM for the past 7 years. IBM is a very large company with its presence in multiple domains of IT. He was part of many of these domains over the length of his career. His exposure to services and sales side of the business, working with clients from different industrial segments, has helped him gain good overall understanding of IT industry. IBM is also known for investing heavily on research and innovation and creating business-use products out of that research output. That is something that inspires Saurabh to innovate, be cognizant of latest technologies and think of ideas to create business out of those. He is a 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore, and Co-Program Leader.
Debabrata Bagchi, Sparsha
Debabrata has extensive experience is product development, research and deployment. In his earlier avatar Debabrata was the Director of Engineering for Archpro Design Automation which was acquired by Synopsys, Inc . In this avatar at Sparsha Debabrata is trying to build an organization from scratch with a vision on enabling learning through innovative and engaging methods. Debabrata has 15+ papers in leading journals and conferences on VLSI and Electronics Design Automation and by some quirk of fate has been granted 4 patents on Low Power from the US PTO. Debabrata is an undergrad from IIT, Kharagpur, CSE and Master’s from Northwestern University, Illinois. When Debabrata is not pretending to work, he is usually found behind his Canon 550D. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Naresh Bharadwaj, Meeva
Naresh is the founder of Meeva Technologies. Meeva provides a platform for enterprises to create and deploy simple to play, intuitive games that combine elements of location, social networking and gaming to deliver fun and interactive experiences to people, on devices they carry all the time Ð their mobile phones. Meeva is an iAccelerator 2010 company – iAccelerator is a program through which CIIE Initiatives and IIM-A supports technology startups to become world class companies. Prior to starting Meeva, Naresh was developing innovative products catering to the 3G UMTS market and has an experience of close to 6 years in that domain. He has a keen interest in studying the social impacts of IT and is all for the use of technology by governments to deliver services to people. Naresh studied at Bangalore University and Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B). He was selected as a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Karthick C S, Knowise Learning Academy
Karthik started his career with Sundaram finance before moving to ING Investment Management, where he was soon overseeing the entire Karnataka Region. He started Knowise Learning Academy with 2 other partners in Jan 2008, which was focussed on training in financial services, and has worked with Canara Bank and Bank of India on their exams. The company has an excellent track record achieving a 90% pass rate onn the CFP and 100% in some courses. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Ramjee Ganti, Nabler
Ramjee has over seven years of work experience spanning multiple domains of mobiles, networking, processors validation, biometrics(entrepreneur), software development and now into web analytics. He worked at Proteans Software, NirmaLabs, Intel and TCS before joining Nabler. He is also co-Founder of Open Coffee Club in Bangalore. He holds a B Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
John Howard, Duron Energy
John Howard is a technology entrepreneur with international experience spanning the private, public and social sectors. In 2008, along with Bill Gross and others at Idealab, he co-founded Duron Energy to directly address the energy needs of off-grid households in emerging markets. He currently leads the company’s worldwide operations based in Bangalore, India. Previously John helped establish a water purification startup, a rural connectivity nonprofit, and worked at McKinsey & Company on many topics including international development, petroleum, microfinance and high tech strategy across the US, EU, Middle East and Asia. He also worked as a systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a robotics startup. John studied mechanical engineering and economics at Caltech and Cambridge, and enjoys traveling, reading, piano, and racquet sports. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Gautam Khot, Arissma Labs
Gautam has over fifteen years of experience in startups and product companies, both in India and the US. He is passionate about applying technology for creating highly useful solutions and products that are also affordable. Over the course of his career so far, he has worked on permission based email marketing platforms, HD video conferencing technology, mobile device management and low cost RFID solutions for the manufacturing industry. At Arrisma Labs, Gautam is presently developing a service stack offering targeted at SMBs in India, besides also spending cycles on a couple of very early stage experiments. Gautam holds a BE (Computer Science) from University of Pune. He was selected as a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Dilip Kumar, Inolyst
Dilip Kumar is the Founder of at Inolyst where he also heads the IP Transactions practice. He advises forward-thinking organizations on maximizing firm asset value by capitalizing on the power of intellectual property. At Inolyst, Dilip has the responsibility for the development and execution of the company’s overall strategy, business development and consulting service delivery as well as all internal functions. He also manages the relationships with strategic partners of the company spread across the globe mainly in US, Europe, Israel, China and Australia. Prior to Inolyst, he was one of the founding members of a Corplo, a patent analytics firm and before that was an Engagement Manager with Evalueserve, a leading research and consulting firm. He is an active member of various startup and technology forums and often speaks on varied topics like Entrepreneurship, IP Strategies and Cross Border licensing models. He holds a Bachelors in Computer Science from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Rishab Lunia, Knowise Learning Academy
Rishab Lunia started his career with DBS Cholamandalam Asset Management. After a one–and-a-half years stint there, Rishab moved on to join OptiMix Ð a division of ING Investment Management. It was after this experience that he decided to start Knowise Learning Academy India (P) Ltd. His company is Headquartered in Bangalore and they have recently opened a branch in Hyderabad. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Vinodh Nandakumar, Gulf News
Vinodh is a product manager at Gulf News in Dubai. Prior to this, he was a product manager with Cleartrip.com, one of India’s leading travel portals in India. Prior to joining Cleartrip, he worked at Aditi Technologies. Vinodh holds a Bachelors from BITS Pilani. He was selected as a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Narendra Narayana, ThinkCore
Narendra Narayana (Naren) is the co-founder and CEO of of ThinkCore Technologies, a technology startup based in Bangalore. ThinkCore Technologies has built PebbleTalk (www.pebbletalk.com), an enterprise social networking and collaboration solution. PebbleTalk was chosen as one of the most-promising-startups at proto.in, an all-India event for the startup community. Prior to PebbleTalk, Naren worked at Wipro for over 14 years handling large customer accounts and was responsible for the project delivery in the accounts. Prior to handling customer accounts, Naren worked on several projects in technical and technical-management roles. Naren loves working in teams, has a strong work ethic and is passionate about delighting customers. Naren studied Computer Engineering at REC, Surathkal, India. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Abhishek Parolkar, Whol.ly
Abhishek is the Co-Founder & CTO of Whol.ly, a startup in hyper-local space, with goal to bring neighbors together for a noble cause. He has been involved in the launch of two other web startups including Digiprotech.net, and MyDuniya. Abhishek is an active contributor to the ruby community and evangelizes the language with passion at IT conferences around India. Earlier in his career, he held positions as Consultant and Lead Technologist for multiple startups in various domains including Telecom (Mobile VAS), Enterprise Apps (Business Process Automation) and Consumer Internet Apps (Social Networking, Financial Entertainment). His work has constantly attracted media attention with coverage in major news paper , blogs & internet shows. Abhishek speak at conferences and has been invited for honorary lectures. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Srinivas Rao Chinthapandu, Core Logic
Srinivas is currently working for Core Logic ltd , a leading mortgage service provider in America as a Technical Team Lead. Srinivas has 10+ years of experience in Software Development in various positions as an architect, developer and pre-sales consultant. Srinivas holds a Masters degree in Management of Information Systems from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
Ayush Rastogi, Fidelity Investments
Passionate about technology and innovation, Ayush is working with Fidelity Investments in the role of team lead and technical consultant. His passion for technology led him to start a small company in his undergraduate college, to deliberately join a start-up to gain the end-to-end IT business exposure, and eventually to manage multinational teams in Fidelity Investments to understand the complex real-time products and huge international client base. Being his family roots in the freedom struggle, Ayush is always strongly orientated to serve his community for its betterment. He is associated with several social organizations since 1999 and always tends to bring his technology and consulting expertise in improving the structure and processes of social organizations. His dedication for community service has earned him several community service awards. To rejuvenate himself, Ayush loves sketching portraits and writing fictions. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Himanshu Sahani, Cheese Care
After his BTech at IIT Roorkee, Himanshu was very clear that he wanted to conceptualize and sell products rather than develop them. He had conceptualized and supervised development of 12 products for the University community through a voluntary student group while at college. So three months into his job at Talisma as a software developer, he convinced his superiors to move into a product management role. He subsequently moved to Intelliworks product management team where he was part of the team which conceptualized the SAAS based product. While at Intelliworks, Himanshu also played the role of Account Manager for India and Australia, coached extensively by Dev Ganesan, CEO Intelliworks. After Intelliworks, Himanshu cofounded Cheese Care with friends from college to help Indian business build user friendly websites and mobile applications. After 2 years and 50+ clients, this belief has been validated. Himanshu leads the sales and business development. The business is growing nicely at more than 100% y-o-y
Amit Sharma, Go Untucked
Amit is the CEO of an exciting business called Go Untucked, which is focused on art and design, and how they can be used to create awesome products of everyday use (like t-shirts). Building on the success of companies like Threadless.com, Go Untucked hopes to have a unique online-offline model of Òsocial retailingÓ. Amit helped raise seed stage funding for this venture. In a past life as an engineer, he built one of the first distributed grid computing management platforms anywhere in the world (patented in Europe/US). He then got an MBA from UCLA, and then spent some time in Silicon Valley before returning to India last year. He has founded a non-profit (www.dosomething.in) around social entrepreneurship, and carried out detailed research in the Indian early stage entrepreneurship ecosystem, working with leading VCs and angels.
Shrikrishna Shrin, Sakurai
Shrikrishna is currently the founder of Sarukai – a startup that aims to educate the world by providing quality education that is equitable, accessible and affordable. He is passionate about equitable education as well as consumer internet apps that entertain. Prior to Sarukai, Shrikrishna was an early team member and product manager at Cooliris (cooliris.com) where he led all analytics efforts. He was also the initial evangelist for the Òcooliris for your siteÓ project, that allows the Cooliris technology to be embedded into web pages and was closely involved in defining the product in its early stages. He was also closely involved in defining product requirements for multiple releases of the Cooliris browser plug-in. Prior to Cooliris, Shrikrishna built facebook apps and one of the apps (Share the love) went on to win the third place among 26 teams in Stanford’s facebook class for getting over 850 thousand installs. Shrikrishna graduated from Stanford University with a Masters in Management Science & Engineering in 2008 and from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 2006. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Ambar Singh, One Billion Minds
Ambar Kumar is Member of the Founding Team and VP of One Billion Minds, India’s first Open Innovation platform, connecting students to Corporates and Non Profits. He has over 7 years of experience in the diversified industry, during which he groomed in multiple roles, from project management and development to business strategy and marketing. Prior to One BIllion Minds, he worked in Infosys for 5 years, where he led multiple projects in the United States. He earned his MBA from European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) Berlin, where he was a SAP mentored scholar and is CFA Level II candidate. He also holds a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from Gorakhpur University. Ambar is an avid trekker, passionate about trading and currently trying to tune his hand in Guitar. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Yajuvendar Singh, Impetus Technologies
Yajuvender Singh (Yaj) is currently working as Senior Vice President with Impetus Technologies, where he has set-up financial services division to conduct financial research and develop innovative products for financial services sector. is Financial Services professional who is actively involved in simplifying financial information for end users. Yaj has 16 years plus experience in financial research, product development and people management. He has played key role in successful development of multiple patented and award winning financial information products and has worked with financial firms like Morningstar, Lipper, Newriver & VARDS among others in various capacities. He is an engineering graduate with MBA and a qualified CFA from India. Yaj is an avid self-drive enthusiast and actively drives to remote areas in Himalayas. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Gaurav Singhal, Siemens
Gaurav founded Siddhast Intellectual Property Innovation while he was still a student, with domain expertise in IP services. He pivoted the business from technology commercialization to a solution of third party IP solutions, and made the company sustainable within its first year, and leading to excellent growth in the second year. Gaurav left the company to join Siemens as an Intellectual Property Attorney, where he helps Siemens to protect, manage, enforce and license its inventions as patents, brands as trademarks, authored material as copyright, and other Intellectual Properties. In future, he is looking to start venture on Technology Commercialization with high inputs from Intellectual Property inclusive of Intellectual Property Financing. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in Bangalore.
Ashwin Sivakumar, Jugular Media
Ashwin Sivakumar is Founder & CEO of Jugular Media, and a specialist in creating Social Media and web (x+) based concepts & business models. His primary industry until Jugular has been Healthcare & Biotech. He has 8+ years of experience including consulting roles, most recently lead the global marketing and positioning at leading Biotech Companies Gene Logic & Ocimum Biosolutions. He has worked and studied at internationally known organizations and universities like Leeds University UK, Josephine Bay Paul Center for Molecular Biology MBL USA, Viikki Biocenter at Helsinki, Finland. He also created India’s first international Bioinformatics ecosystem by conceptualizing Inbios- The Bioinformatics Society of India back in the year 2000, engaged and grew the community to more than 5000 members during a time when growing professional multi-regional internet communities were not remotely as easy as it is now. Ashwin has received several awards including AP Headstart startup for the year, Biovision Nxt Fellow, and 100 most promising young MBAs and Researchers in global life sciences: Biovision-The World Life Science forum & Science Magazine.
