Individual investors and advisors to portfolio companies
Individual Advisors
Hemanth Gokavarapu
Staff Software Engineer, Zendesk
Help companies tackle scalability issues with growth and lead fellow engineers to tackle challenging problems such as implementing SOA, Kubernetes at scale, building new cloud platform and migrating datacenters to AWS. Building core toolkit to enable easy implementation of discoverable services, APIs and developing a scalable infrastructure for Apps and APIs on Kubernetes and AWS. Lead innovation, design and implementation of tools, self monitoring, self healing system and services that make fellow Engineers productive and happy.  Hobbies are traveling, photography. Passionate about Venture capitals and start-ups.
Mahesh Krishnamurti
Impact Advisor-Investor, Evangelist for responsible Investing, ESG Transformation & Evaluation

Former MD/Country Head, member of Global Leadership Team, at RGP India, a leading US Nasdaq-listed management consultancy (“RECN”/www.rgp.com), for 11 years (September 2007 to December 2018). Investor in early-stage/seed ventures. Supervisory Board Member at MyCXO/CFO (Restructuring Advisory), Advisor-Partner at GAIA Ventures (Social Enterprise), Partner (Non-Executive) at C Cube International, Inc;

Business partner and advisor to leaders at Fortune 100/1000 companies, startups, and distressed/turnaround situations in the US, India, and internationally for 30+ years.

Recognized as a collaborative and effective leader with a strong executive presence and outstanding communication skills.  Adept at “connecting the dots”.   Recognized as “Outstanding 50 Asian American in Business” (Asian American Business Development Center, New York)

Functional Expertise: Strategy, Business Development, M&A, Finance, and Organizational Governance and Leadership.
US Career: Digital Equipment Corp, Symbol Technologies, Henry Schein, Goldman Sachs, Worth (Media/Magazine, Worth.com), RGP (RGP.com)

Innately international and versatile, having lived in Thailand (childhood years), Switzerland (schooling), UK, US, and India.  Conversant in French, Thai, Tamil, Telugu, and Hindi in addition to English. Raised in a United Nations family.

Education:  B.Sc. (Economics) London School of Economics and Political Science;  MBA  (Finance) NYU, Stern School of Business;  Management programs at the Wharton School, and MIT, Sloan School of Management.

Other:  Board Member, Yes Bank; Chairman, American Chamber of Commerce, India Western Region;  Deeply rooted in Indian classical music and rythm.

Mitesh Agarwal
Sales Vice President, Global Key & Lead Accounts, Oracle India

Mitesh Agarwal is the Vice President for Global Key & Lead Accounts for Oracle and is based in Bangalore. Oracle established the Global Key Accounts program as a direct response to customer feedback and the need for more effective account management, to address the complexity brought on by volatile market dynamics including acquisitions, digitization, policy mandates and large transformation projects. Mitesh provides leadership for business, strategy & transformation for these top enterprise customers.

Mitesh’s goal is to establish relationships at vital ranks within the customer organizations, provide strategic direction and engage effectively to make their business successful. Digital transformation coupled with new technology dimensions using AI, Machine Learning, Block Chain, Conversational systems, Cloud, IoT and several new innovations are areas he and his team are chartered to bring forth for your consideration.

Prior to his current role, Mitesh led the Oracle India Sales Consulting organization and was the India Field CTO for Oracle. He was instrumental in driving the company’s Cloud & Digital Strategy agenda, supporting Oracle’s customers and helping them tide through these transitions. He was involved in working across Oracle’s product portfolio of Cloud, Applications, Database, Analytics, Digital & Hardware. He was instrumental in setting up the Oracle Startup Cloud Accelerator Program in India and has mentored several startups.

He is an astute leader known for his customer first approach and has garnered huge accolades from customers for his business and technology insights. Mitesh graduated from BITS Pilani and has a Masters In Physics and a Mechanical Engineering degree. He honed his leadership chops from the Wharton-SMU and subsequently from the prestigious Global Business Consortium program from London Business School. He loves quizzing and hosting quizzes with some National titles under his belt.

Nikhil Gupta

Nikhil Gupta is a successful entrepreneur and executive. Nikhil was founder and CEO  of Avid Secure, which got acquired by Sophos. Avid Secure built a market-leading AI-powered multi-cloud security analytics and compliance platform. Post the acquisition he was VP Strategy, Cloud Security at Sophos.  Prior to Avid Secure, Nikhil held several leadership positions for 20+ years in organizations such as VMware, Cisco, ForeScout, Ericsson (Joined through the acquisition of Entrisphere, where he was the founding engineer), Alcatel, and Bell Labs. Nikhil holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BS and MS in Computer Science.

Piyush Gupta
Former founder of Exeros (acquired by IBM). On board of several companies like Waterline, iNDx Lifecare, Sirionlabs

After a 35 year technology career, Piyush now spends his time advising entrepreneurs and technology startups. From 2009-13, Piyush was Vice-President, Product Management at IBM with responsibility for various software product families including Information Integration, Big Data, Database & Warehousing. Piyush came to IBM via the acquisition of Exeros, where he was the founding CEO from 2004-09, growing it from inception through two rounds of financing, delivery of market leading products, acquisition of 20+ Fortune 500 customers, and the sale to IBM. He has raised about $50M in venture funds during his startup career.

 

Prior to Exeros, Piyush was Founder/CEO of Promeria Software, a venture funded vendor of eSourcing software for the procurement of Direct Materials, sold in to Ariba during 2004. Promeria was an offshoot of LiquidPrice.com, a venture funded consumer eCommerce reverse auction site that Piyush founded in 1999 and led as CEO. From 1995-97 Piyush was Vice-President Engineering at Informix Software, with cradle to grave responsibility for several product areas. From 1984-95, Piyush held various technical and management positions at IBM. Piyush started his IBM career at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center and left after delivering the pioneering Enterprise Information Integration product, DataJoiner to the market in 1995. Early in his career, he spent three years developing Real-time Software at Schlumberger Corporation.

 

Piyush serves on the Board of  Evolko and SirionLabs. He is on the Advisory Board of iNDx Technology, Invaria Tech Numerify, Wujitech and Buddha Fellowship Program.

Past engagements include Advisor to the Office of the CEO at Infosys, Venture Partner at Helion Ventures, consulting at SAP, BOD at iNDx Lifecare and LinguaNext (exited to Fidel Tech), and Board of Advisors at Bityota (exited to LifeLock), ZafeSoft and SpeeDEV (exited to Kovair). Piyush is an informal advisor and mentor to numerous young entrepreneurs and startup companies. He holds a B.Tech (EE) from IIT Kanpur, a Masters (CS) from UT Austin, and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

 

Prem Sankar
Investor and Entrepreneur

Prem has 25  years of experience and interest in Software Industry in the area of UI/UX, Graphics, Multimedia, Computer Vision, AI, Deep Learning, Robotics, FinTech and Autonomous Systems. Prem is an active Angel investors and is based out of San Fransisco.

Protik Mukhopadhyay
Chief Delivery Officer and Managing Partner, Standav Corp

Protik  is Managing Partner, Standav Corp. He advises clients on Sales Business Transformation initiatives (Quote to Cash, Pricing and Customer 360). Prior to that, he managed the west coast Customer Success team for PROS (NYSE-PRO). He has spent many years in sales and pricing business transformation initiatives with previous positions at Apttus, NetApp, the Federal Reserve Bank, and Brocade.

Identifying customer pain points and white spaces in the market, translating them into insights for the product/solutions development team and developing compelling sales strategies inspires him to walk the extra mile.

He enjoys coaching on Customer Success, SaaS Go-to-Market Strategy, Product Development, and Sales.

Subbu Rama
Ex Co Founder of Bitfusion, acquired by VMware

Entrepreneur, Builder, Investor, most recently co-founder @ Bitfusion (acquired by VMWare). 15+ years product and business experience in SaaS, infrastructure software applications and platforms. Former Intel and Dell alum, held various roles from engineer to executive, worked on some exciting stuff ranging from microprocessors to cloud marketplaces. Engineering from University of Wisconsin Madison.

Suchint Majmudar
Partner, Deloitte India

Suchint Majmudar is a transfer pricing partner in Deloitte India.  Suchint has over a decade and a half of transfer pricing experience, specifically in the areas of conceptualizing transfer pricing solutions, value chain structuring, audit defense and advisory assignments.

Suchint’s portfolio includes multinational clients in the services, manufacturing and distribution sectors, in Technology, Consumer Products and Pharma/Biotech. During his career with Arthur Andersen and PwC, Suchint has obtained international transfer pricing expertise in the areas of intangibles, Mutual Agreement Procedures, Uncertain Tax Positions and Advance Pricing Agreements.

Suchint is a member of the community of practitioners in the Africa and Japan corridors and the Life Sciences team in Deloitte. He is engaged with several accelerators and corporate venture capital entities for forging alliances and collaborations with start-ups in technology domains and is piloting the Morning Pitch initiative of Deloitte in India.