VCCircle

Akhil Awasthi is the managing partner of Tata Capital, Mid-Market Private Equity Fund. Awasthi has about 20-years of experience in private equity, listed equity and banking, having funded both Indian and foreign incorporated businesses across industries such as technology, life-sciences and consumer. The most recent part of his career has been as a partner with Baring Private Equity Partners (India) where he successfully built the healthcare practice and created a portfolio of four successful investments.

An investment banker with 11 years of deal execution and corporate client coverage experience at Citi (Mumbai, Hong Kong), Kotak, Goldman Sachs (Mumbai, Hong Kong) and HSBC (Mumbai, London, Tokyo). His areas of expertise include M&A Advisory, Corporate Strategy, Equity and Debt Capital Markets fundraising for clients across industries such as Transport and Infrastructure, Metals and Mining, Automotive, (prior deal experience in FIG and Telecom as well).

Amit has originated and closed over 30 deals across M&A (buy-side and sell-side), equity capital markets offerings (IPO's, follow-ons etc.), bond offerings, private placements etc. in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Hong Kong and Korea.

Amit is an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, B.A. (Hons.) Economics from Delhi University and a CFA Charterholder.

Mr. Hanmantrao R. Gaikwad is founder chairman of BVG India Ltd, a Bharat Vikas Group company. Starting with 8 people in 1997, BVG has crossed mark of $150 million as total group turnover in 2012 with 26,000+ employees across the country.

Bharat Vikas Group has businesses spanning facility management, horticulture, land development, engineering, electrical projects, municipal waste management, waste to energy generation, renewable energy, sugar manufacturing etc.

BVG India Ltd, Flagship company of Bharat Vikas Group, is India’s leading integrated services company.

Mr. Gaikwad is from a farmer family of a small village Rahimatpur in Satara District. He has inherited and preserved old ascetic values of simplicity and honesty from his family.

While studying he formed society Bharat Vikas Pratisthan in 1993 to do something different for the our great nation. Under BVP, he raised fund to help poor students for their eduction.

While working in Tata motors, he requested management for job opportunities for un‐employed rural youths. TATA Motors was kind enough & gave opportunity in Housekeeping with 8 people in 1997. Due to Quality services, hard work and commitment strength gone up to 200 people within year, then left Tata motors and started full-time business in the name BVG INDIA LTD with its first client as TATA Motors. Sincere efforts helped increasing client list to 350+. Which includes eminent government properties like Rashtrapati Bhawan, Hon. Prime Minister’s House & Office, Hyderabad House, Parliament House, Parliament House Library, Vigyan Bhawan, Delhi High Court etc.

Some other prominent clients are Safdurjung Hospital, Indian Railways, Bharat Electronics Ltd, Nuclear Power Corporation of India, ONGC, Mantralaya – Mumbai, TATA Motors LTD., G.E. Power Controls, I.T.C.‐ across country, Bajaj Auto Ltd., Mahindra and Mahindra, Swami Ramdeoji’s Maharaja Patanjali Yogpeeth Haridwar etc.

Kailash Katkar is passionate about making the online world a safer place to be. His vision and thought leadership has made Quick Heal Antivirus a leading and preferred security solution for individuals, small and medium companies as well as large organizations worldwide.

He founded Quick Heal Technologies under the name of CAT Computer Services in 1993. An inspiration to many entrepreneurs, he built the empire through sheer hard work, keen business acumen and a solid moral foundation. As founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Quick Heal Technologies, Kailash leads the sales, marketing, customer services and technical support teams and also provides guidance to the wide network of dealers and distributors. Under his leadership, the company has achieved a market share of more than 30% in revenue in India.

He has been felicitated with multiple recognitions including the Rotary Recognition Award and the Entrepreneurs International Honors for his exemplary contribution and significant achievement in the field of IT.

Kishor is responsible for defining KPIT Cummins' technology and customer acquisition strategy across six continents. He is the champion for new technology adoption and incubation of customer centric new projects. Under his leadership KPIT Cummins has filed 38 patents and has developed over 100 IPs in cutting-edge automotive and semiconductor technology areas.

A Chartered Accountant by profession Kishor began his career as a practitioner in Kirtane & Pandit Chartered Accountant in 1983 and within a year and a half was a partner in the firm. Kishor's vision and passion have been integral to KPIT Cummins' leadership in key focus verticals and in building the company from a small start up to one of the world's largest, most recognized engineering services provider for the manufacturing industry.

His contributions have been pivotal in building strategic partnerships leading to a strong and prestigious customer base. He has set a standard of excellence in the areas of international operations, acquisitions, mergers and integration. His keen observation and open mind have contributed greatly to KPIT Cummins' growth as a company. His exceptional people skills and sincerity has worked wonders in diverse cultural geographies.

Mr Mahesh Deshmukh has 25 years experience in corporate. Well rounded Engineering expertise in developing Embedded technology. Currently he serves as a managing director of Chetas Control Systems Pvt. Ltd.

With Good professional record Mehesh deshmukh has done B.E. (Electronics & Telecommunication) and Diploma in Business Management. Some of his professional achievements are G.S. Parkhe Industrial Merit Award by Mahratta Camber of Commerce Industries & Agriculture for the manufacturing product Ultrasonic Flow Meters in India. Initiated manufacturing unit at Parwanoo-Himachal Pradesh for Battery Powered Ultrasonic Water Meters. Bagged largest order for Multipath Ultrasonic Flow Meters of Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board, Bangalore. Bagged largest order for AMR water metering projects of Municipal Corporation of  Greater Mumbai.

Mohit is a go-getter. He was an early team member and head of India Operations for mig33, world's largest "mobile first" community with more than 55 million users. Prior to mig33, Mohit studied at Stanford Univeristy, where he co-founded Mobile Momentum with Prof. Tom Kosnik. Mohit has also co-authored a widely referenced mobile industry report, ‘Future of Mobile VAS in India’. Mohit loves to travel and never forgets to eat chocolate brownies at every place he visits.

M S Unnikrishnan, took over as Managing Director on July 1, 2007. Earlier, as Executive Vice President, he was head of the company's project business, viz. captive power, boilers & heaters and air pollution control.

Unnikrishnan began his career as a graduate trainee with Thermax after completing his mechanical engineering from Regional Engineering College, Nagpur in 1982. He went on to set up marketing operations for the energy division of Thermax in the western region.

In 1987, he joined the EID Parry Group as Deputy Regional Manager and after a four-year stint, he was promoted as the head of its engineering division. In 1992, Unnikrishnan joined as an Assistant General Manager of Terrazzo Incorporated – Sharjah, heading manufacturing, marketing and commercial operations.

Unnikrishnan rejoined Thermax as a General Manager in 1997. He subsequently headed the waste management and absorption cooling divisions of the company, turning around both these businesses and making them profitable. After an organizational restructuring in 2000, he was part of the newly formed Executive Council. He led the human resource function of Thermax during its critical turnaround period and later established the Project Management Office, to spearhead the transformation initiative of the company.

Narendra Barhate is the co-founder of SEED Infotech. He is the Managing Director and CEO of the company. He spearheads business development and expansion initiatives of SEED Infotech. A complete techie, he has been instrumental in the keen selection of technologies to be added to the company’s portfolio. Moving towards his pursuit to build the ‘Nalanda’ of modern IT training, he has endeavored to add BFSI, Engineering Services and Healthcare Management practices at SEED Infotech.

He is an alumnus of two of the most renowned educations institutions of India namely – College of Engineering Pune (COEP), and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai. Prior to establishing SEED Infotech, he has worked as a researcher at the DRDO.

His obsession for uncompromised customer satisfaction and quality of services has today made his company the partner of first choice.

Nitin Kulkarni is the Chief Operating Officer of Persistent Systems Limited. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering in Electronics from Mumbai University in 1988 and a Master’s Degree in Engineering in Electronics from VNIT, Nagpur University in 1991. Prior to joining Persistent Systems Limited in 2006, he worked with NELCO, Mumbai from 1991 to 1992 as a Senior Systems Engineer. He subsequently worked with Siemens Information Systems Limited from October 1992 to February 1996 as a Senior Systems Analyst and with Infosys Technologies Limited between May 1996 to November 2006 in various roles in two tranches ranging from Project Manager to Assistant Vice President and Development Center Head.

Nitin Kulkarni is now designated as an ‘Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer’ of the Company.

Pradeep joined Intel Capital in 2003. He focuses on Intel's investment activities in India. Intel Capital is the strategic investment arm of Intel Corporation.  Since its inception, Intel Capital has invested over US$ 7.5 billion in more than 1,000 companies worldwide. Pradeep is a Board Observer for Zend, WSO2, and Intrasoft (123greetings.com). He also invested in and managed the exit for JBoss (acquired by Red Hat). His other investments include SpikeSource, BlackDuck, LikeWise, Collabnet, One97 Communications, Global Talent Track (GTT).

Prior to Intel Capital, Pradeep spent over 15 years in Silicon Valley, in technology and product marketing roles at startups like Inference, BroadVision, Healthon, and as an entrepreneur starting Yopa, a mobile middleware software company (acquired by XDrive/AOL).

Pradeep has a M.S.E.E from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, a BE (EE) from VJTI (University of Bombay), and is a Kauffman Fellow.

Mr. Ramdev joined the Advisors in September 2003 and was previously in the global research division at McKinsey & Company.  He received an MBA with a specialization in finance from Management Development Institute, Gurgaon and a Bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from BarodaUniversity.

Sandeep is the Founder and Managing Director of the Kaizen Private Equity, India’s first education-focused private equity fund. He leads overall fund strategy, investment analysis, fund raising and relationship management with many of the Fund’s clients and investors. He has 17 years of professional experience, which spans from consulting, operations leadership and investment management. Sandeep is regarded a thought leader in the private equity space and regularly contributes by speaking at conferences and private equity panels.

Sandeep is a trained engineer having acquired his apprenticeship as a railway officer at Jamalpur Gymkhana and later on, graduated with a MS in Civil Engineering from the University of Delaware. During his undergraduate studies at Jamalpur, he designed, set up and operated an adult education program for factory workers and hospital staff for three years.

Subsequent to an engineering consultancy stint, Sandeep moved to California and acquired an MBA from the Graduate School of Business of Stanford University. Post graduation, he joined the venture capital industry where he was involved in a variety of successful transactions and start-ups including Bridgestream, Lassologic, Reconnex, GraniteEdge Network, Clairmail, Xactly Corporation and others. Sandeep currently represents Kaizen on the Board of a company in distance education services segment in India. His passion is to work with entrepreneurs in building market leading companies.

S. Balasubramaniam aka Suby, has over 28 years experience in Finance and Commercial functions. He graduated in Commerce from St.Xavier's College, Calcutta in 1978 and is a Fellow Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, and an Associate Member of the Institute of Cost & Works Accountants of India. He started his career in Dunlop India Limited and then moved on to successful stints in senior positions with diverse range of exposure to industries from Polyester, Plantations, and Pharmaceuticals and has signifcant experience in handling the challenges of the Financial Management and operating efficiences in demanding envoirnments. He joined Zensar as its Chief Financial Officer in Oct 2005 and has been part of the core team ever since then.

Outside Finance, he loves meeting people and public speaking on a diverse range of subjects and lists Technology,Economics, Hindustani Classical Music and Reading, as his interests.

Sanjay has over 15 years of entrepreneurial, business development, management consulting and operations experience. He spent 7 years between PwC Consulting and IBM Global Services' Silicon Valley offices, advising and working closely with leading high tech clients like HP/ Compaq, Sun Microsystems, Intel and AT&T. Before his return to India in 2010, he co founded and ran a Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) company. Sanjay has been a member of the Mumbai Angels, one of India's leading angel groups, since its inception in 2006. He has made 8 investments across mobile, online travel, software, healthcare. Sanjay was an early investor in InMobi (formerly mKhoj), one of India's best known angel-funded success stories.    

In the US, Sanjay was a Principal with IBM Global Services and earlier a Consultant with PwC in a similar role. One of his key global, transformational projects was the HP/Compaq merger, where he advised and closely worked with senior executives and managers on a global scale.Early in his career, Sanjay supported the initial growth of Kanbay which had a successful IPO on the Nasdaq in '04, and was then acquired by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young for $1.25 billion in 2006.

Shrirang Tambe is the founder and Managing Director of Ourea Capital Advisors. His expertise lies in advising and nurturing growth oriented companies across various domains of growth capital. Till date, he has worked with more than 50 companies in the last five years across sectors.He has built a niche advisory offering in OureaCapital Advisors whereby any growth oriented company can avail services across value chain right from formulating the strategy and business plan, raising capital to monitoring the on ground execution of those plans.

Prior to Ourea Capital Advisors, he was a fund manager with a US based private equity fund "Clearwater Capital Partners". He was responsible for right from initial identification of investment to execution and extensive post investment asset management. He has also been involved in large LBO transactions in Indonesia and Thailand.

Prior to Clearwater Capital Partners, he was a part of cross border M&A team at ANZ investment Bank in their Merger & Acquisition team in Mumbai whereby assisting Indian companies in European acquisitions was his key role. He started his career with PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

He has been a visiting faculty to many business schools in Mumbai in the area of corporate finance and valuation.

He has been a speaker at various conferences in India for prestigious institutions such as ICAI, various chapters of CII and SME Chambers and also at Global Distressed Debt Conference in London in 2007.

As a passion to nurture entrepreneurship among students, he is a speaker on entrepreneurship and finance at various colleges on behalf of NEN Global, one of the largest NGO promoting entrepreneurship across India.

He is a Chartered Accountant by qualification.

Supam Maheshwari is the Co-founder and CEO of FirstCry.com and GoodLife.com. He has been instrumental in leading FirstCry to the top in a very short span of time and raising two rounds of funding ( $18 Million) for Brainbees Solutions which owns FirstCry.com and GoodLife.com.

Prior to this, Supam had Co- founded Brainvisa Technologies Pvt. Ltd in the year 2000, which was one of the top notch e-learning companies in the world, which he sold to Indecomm Global Services Pvt. Ltd.  in 2007 for about $25 Million. Supam has  a wide array of experience in the corporate field with brief stints in companies like Vivendi and Pepsi. He was one of the youngest pioneers of eLearning solutions from the Indian sub-continent.

Supam Maheshwari holds an engineering degree from Delhi College of Engineering, and an MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad.

Vishal Tulsyan has played a key role in driving MOPE success through organization-building skills,robust  network and a keen understanding of strategic and financial business issues. Under his leadership, MOPE raised funds for and invested the proceeds of IBEF-I, its maiden fund. Vishal enjoys more than 13 years of experience in financial services. At Rabobank, he was a Director responsible for the origination and execution of structured finance, project finance, acquisition finance transactions, and private equity and M&A products.

At MOPE, Vishal is responsible for all business aspects. For IBEF-I, he has managed the overall process of evaluating and structuring the thirteen investments and has the overall responsibility for managing the portfolio companies. He represents the Fund on the Boards of inTarvo Technologies, Dixon Technologies, and Time Technoplast

Vishal is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (all-India rank holder) and was a top ranking graduate of the prestigious St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata.

VT is a Managing Director with Sequoia Capital. VT has focused on Consumer, Retail, Healthcare and Energy sectors and has led investments in Genesis Colors, Vasan, Celon Labs and Ind-Barath. VT has worked closely with Paras and Lal Pathlabs and also supported public market investments in Cognizant, Havells and InfoTech. He is on the boards at Vasan, Celon Labs and Lal Pathlabs. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital, VT was with McKinsey & Company where he spent 6 years. VT received an MBA from the IIM Ahmedabad where he was awarded the Presidents Gold Medal and holds a BS in engineering from BITS Pilani.

Rehan brings twelve years of experience building and managing internet businesses to Remindo. Prior to Remindo, Rehan founded Flora2000 in 1999. Under his leadership, Flora has evolved into a multimillion dollar company, active in over 150 countries and with offices in Gibraltar, the US and India. As CEO of Flora2000, Rehan oversees corporate management, strategic brand positioning and execution, ensuring the company's hyper speed organic growth from a start up to the world's premier overseas floral delivery specialist.

In addition to Remindo, Rehan also holds several directors positions. Currently, Rehan is a director of Druvaa Software Pvt. Ltd., which provides next generation backups for enterprise laptops & pdas. Under his leadership Druvaa is one of the first start ups in India to secure pre-revenue funding. Rehan is also the director of 'GoSmellTheFlowers.com', a blog that addresses Well Being in the US and the UK.

Rehan holds a BA in Economics from St. Xavier's College in Mumbai; and has completed the Post Graduate ICAEW Accounting Foundation Course from the University of London.

Mahesh Murthy is the Managing Partner of seedfund. He has 26 years of marketing and advertising experience, of which 15 are in online marketing.

Mahesh has worked with Grey in India and Ogilvy in Hong Kong, where he won notoriety and awards as a creative director on HP, The Economist, Pepsi and MTV - for whom he wrote and directed a spot voted “Asia’s best commercial of the decade”.

He moved to a Silicon Valley firm, CKS Partners (later, USWeb/CKS) as Creative Director, GM and Partner – where he helped launch the first commercial version of Yahoo in 1995 and the Earth’s Biggest Bookstore campaign for Amazon.com in 1997. After a successful NASDAQ IPO, Mahesh moved to head marketing at iCat, an e-commerce firm in Seattle.

Mahesh then returned to India to run Channel V, till its sale to Newscorp in 2000 and then founded Passionfund to invest in startups. He believed there was a need for a pay-for-performance digital brand management firm, and set up Pinstorm in Bombay. With over 120 people across 6 offices in India, Singapore, Malaysia, Europe and the US, Pinstorm is today among the world's leading digital marketing firms.

Mahesh has a passion for early-stage investing and teamed up with Pravin Gandhi and Bharati Jacob (ex-Infinity) in 2006 to set up Seedfund, today a leading early-stage venture capital fund in India. Seedfund already has 12 investments, including Carwale, RedBus, AFAQs and Vaatsalya.

Vishal Kapur is a Vice President and part of the managing team at Avigo Capital, an independent private equity fund based out of New Delhi with a focus on private equity investments in the SME sector in India. He was earlier a consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton in the USA and Boston Consulting Group in India, specializing in operations and corporate strategy. His skills are in corporate strategy, corporate restructuring and business performance improvement. Mr. Kapur has a MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and a B.E in Chemical Engineering.

Before joining as a founding member at Ambit Pragma Ventures, Mangesh had over 13 years across the SCM value chain with FMCG, Telecom & Pharma sectors
- For 3½ years, Mangesh was responsible for Planning, Logistics & Distribution, Working Capital Management and Credit Management at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Pharmaceuticals, last as General Manager.

- Prior to that, he worked with Reliance Infocomm as a Senior Manager and played a key role in setting up the supply chain processes, warehouse management system & MIS during project launch phase. Subsequently, he was responsible for 3PL management and Planning.

- Over a 6½ years period, Mangesh handled various supply chain portfolios at Asian Paints, a global top 10 paint company, best known for its state-of-the-art supply chain.

- Sales & Service experience with Tata Telecom Ltd. in the western region of India

Supreet Deshpande, B.E Co-Founded NovaLead Pharma Pvt. Ltd. in 2007 and also serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Deshpande's main focus at NovaLead is to build competent research partnerships to progress NovaLead's research programs rapidly towards the market. He has over 16 years experience in business development and international marketing in diverse industries including automobile, agricultural automotive, information technology and in life sciences.
 

Sanjeev Dasgupta has over 20 years of experience in the areas of Corporate Finance, Strategy and Financial Control. Prior to joining ICICI Venture, he was the Managing Director at Future Capital Real Estate. In this role he led investments in Retail and Mixed-use assets. He played a key role in equity investments of USD 300 Mln and development of real estate assets of around USD 1.5 Billion and in fund raising for the domestic fund, Kshitij (Rs. 350 Cr.), and the offshore fund, Horizon (USD 350 Mln).

Prior to this, Sanjeev has worked with companies such as Tata Exports, UTI Inc, Salomon Smith Barney, Merrill Lynch, Tata Teleservices and Epicenter Technologies. Sanjeev's experience spans domestic & international tenures in London & Hong Kong. In these assignments he has handled Finance, Investment Banking & Business Development Functions.

Sanjeev is a qualified Chartered Accountant , Company Secretary and an MBA from London Business School.

Rohit Gera is the Managing Director of Gera Developments.
He has a Bachelor of Science degree with a double major in Project Management and Economics from the University of Massachusetts of Amherst.

Rohit Gera is currently a Vice Presidentof CREDAI - Pune Metro Formely known as Promoters and Builders Association of Poona.

He is also a member of the Executive Committee of Mahratta Chamber Of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA).

Anupam started his entrepreneurial journey by founding People Group - A New Media & Entertainment group, which includes businesses such as Shaadi.com, Makaan.com, Mauj Mobile and People Pictures. Known for his sharp business acumen and an eye for detail, Anupam has led People Group from one milestone to another and today the group is recognized as one of the most innovative enterprises in the country.

Anupam with his keen sense of business development, marketing & business analysis has pioneered a number of revolutionary concepts in Indian business. Shaadi.com - the world’s largest matrimonial service provider was launched in the year 1996. With more than 20 million members and 2 million success stories to its credit, Shaadi.com has emerged as the premier matrimonial brand on the Internet, and the first business of its kind across the world. Similarly, Makaan.com – India’s fastest growing online real estate portal, and Mauj Mobile - a mobile content & applications company have been initiated by Anupam and have quickly grown to become recognized names in their respective segments. Recently, People Pictures released the hit feature film titled ‘99’.

Besides his operational roles, Anupam is also an active angel investor. He is the primary investor in a few of India’s largest digital media opportunities. He is also a member of Indian Angel Network and Mumbai Angels.

Anupam Mittal has been voted by BusinessWeek as one of India’s 50 Most Powerful People. He has been on the list of one of the 25 people to watch out for by ‘The Week’ Magazine & one of the 100 most influential NRIs in the USA by ‘Roshni’ Magazine.