Growth-Stage Investors with a Purpose

Ankur is a global startup executive with 20 years of investing and operating experience. Ankur is the former Chief Finance and Strategy Officer of Weee! and was previously a seed investor and Chief Finance and Strategy Officer at Careem, a ride-hailing company in the Greater Middle East which was recently acquired for $3.1B by Uber. Prior to Careem, Ankur made venture investments in emerging markets at Acumen Fund and played multiple public service roles. He helped in building over 25 public school libraries in New York City with the Robin Hood Foundation and starting a company to provide safe drinking water to rural communities in India. Ankur began his career with McKinsey & Company. Ankur holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University, and a Master of Public Administration in International Development from Harvard's Kennedy School where he was a Reynolds and a Soros Fellow.

Ashish heads the finance function at Careem and was instrumental in the company’s acquisition by Uber in 2019 for $3.1B. He has been in leading finance and strategy roles at technology startups as well as large companies and is passionate about technology entrepreneurship in India. He has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Texas, Austin, and an MBA from INSEAD.

As a senior executive at world class consumer internet companies, Ashish has led cross functional teams around new growth initiatives, investments in internal cloud projects, and acquisitions while building talented teams of statisticians, economists, data engineers, and operations analysts. Ashish is an expert in data analytics and operations finance. In the past 15 years, he has developed expertise in building decision frameworks and guiding business decisions in areas that have market ambiguity and risk at the world’s top Internet companies: Google and Facebook.

Brian is responsible for driving Adobe’s global talent and diversity & inclusion strategy as well as talent development and acquisition programs. He joins Adobe from Impossible Foods where he served as Chief People Officer, leading the creation of the ‘thriving wage’ initiative for all employees. Prior to Impossible Foods, Brian spent a decade at Gilead Sciences, where he was vice president of talent, development, and inclusion. Brian previously served on the board of the Association for Talent Development and has also held talent development positions at Amgen and Achieve Forum (Korn-Ferry Company).

Dr. Catherine Mohr is the President of the Intuitive Foundation and previously the Vice President of Strategy for Intuitive Surgical, Inc. where she has held both research and strategy roles since 2006. Prior to joining Intuitive Surgical Inc., Dr. Mohr served in engineering project manager and new business development roles at AeroVironment. Holding a B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and an M.D. from Stanford University, Dr. Mohr has a diverse background which covers surgery, medical technology, engineering, product design, healthcare, alternative energy, automotive, aerospace, global entrepreneurship, IP litigation, FDA compliance, education, and product development.

Cyrus is the head of sustainable product at Amazon which pretty much sums up his purpose in life. He is focused on consumption that is regenerative for the planet. He lives and breathes sustainability and is committed to a consumer led movement in climate change. He was the head of sustainability at Nike, worked in the Obama White House, at McKinsey and was educated at MIT.

Dan is a serial entrepreneur turned technology executive. Prior to Google, Dan spent a decade as General Manager at Pure Storage, a leader in flash-based storage products. Dan previously founded Cirtas Systems and Jibe Networks in the Wide Area Networking space that was eventually acquired by Citrix.

Feng Zhu is the MBA Class of 1958 Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, where he leads the Platform Lab within the Digital, Data, and Design Institute, co-chairs the Harvard Business Analytics Program, and serves as the course head for the Technology and Operations Management course in the MBA required curriculum. He is a faculty associate at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard. Professor Zhu is an expert on platform strategy, digital innovation and transformation, competitive strategy, and business model innovation.

Jay is passionate about education and technology, having served as Senior Vice President at 2U, CTO of Trilogy Education (sold to 2U), Chief Digital Officer at Barnes and Noble, President of CK-12 Foundation, and CTO at McGraw-Hill. Jay received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from MIT.

Jaya Venkataraman is an accomplished Sales Management professional with over twenty years of experience driving business development, sales, and profitability in the technology sector. She currently heads Cybersecurity sales for Informa Tech with a particular focus on market leading brands such as Black Hat. Prior to Informa, Jaya has worked for Ericsson, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Oracle, managing teams and driving sales of various telecom products, applications and services towards US service providers such as T-Mobile and Verizon. Jaya earned her Master of International Management degree from Thunderbird School of Global Management and has completed Executive Management programs from Columbia University and London Business School.

Jonathan has been deep in the gaming domain with 20 years of business development and strategy experience across companies like Electronic Arts, Zynga, Betable, Skillz, Baobab Studios and now Discord. Jonathan understands gamification and analytics deeply and has been an investor in and advisor to multiple technology startups.

Kamal is a serial entrepreneur (co-founded four companies) and technology executive who has successfully scaled and sold multiple companies including Selectica, Apttus and ModelN. At Ikigai, as President, Kamal is helping create an AI app platform that helps operational teams make faster, better decisions under uncertainty.

Kartik is a digital economy researcher, data scientist, entrepreneur (co-founder of Yodle) and an angel investor. He is a globally renowned professor of marketing and has been voted best professor at Wharton multiple times. Kartik is also a frequent speaker on entrepreneurship in India and has been invited to be part of the distinguished jury for Economic Times’ “Startup of the year” awards.

With three decades of sales and operations experience, Lars is a global leader in enterprise software and sales solutions. Lars has the rare distinction of taking four companies from seed stage to IPO as a sales leader including Cloudera, Arcsight, Riverbed and Portal Software.

He holds a BE in Chemical Engineering from Panjab University, an MS from Tulane University, and an MBA from the University of San Francisco. Mr. Vohra is a Registered Environmental Professional, a Professional Engineer in Civil Engineering, and a certified Design-Build Institute of America professional. He has extensive experience in global infrastructure, environmental remediation, MEC, and disaster recovery projects and serves on advisory councils at the University of San Francisco and Tulane University.

Mark is one of the leading academic authorities in terms of venture capital and private equity research in the United States. He is also a prolific investor. Mark has two B.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Management Science from MIT, an MBA from London Business School, and a PhD from University of Texas at Austin.

Maryam is a seasoned technology executive with 25 years of operating experience across strategy, sales, business development and P&L responsibilities at companies like Wyse Technologies and Dell. She has helped scale companies from $10M to $100M+ in revenue. She has served on multiple public and private Boards of Directors.

Nandi is a seasoned finance professional with over 16 years of senior management experience in the Middle East. A strategist with entrepreneurial traits, he believes in investing in the businesses of tomorrow which will contribute immensely to the new world. Nandi is an active early-stage investor and sits on several boards across various countries. Nandi is a Chartered Accountant from India.

Rajesh is an accomplished senior executive who has worked with multi-billion-dollar corporations in leadership positions working in several countries across diverse businesses and nationalities with a successful track record. He has more than 30 years of experience in the retail, distribution and logistics of fast-moving consumer goods, fashion and beauty products covering Asia, Middle East, Europe and the US.

Sandeep is a serial entrepreneur and technology executive, having co-founded and exited multiple companies including eboodle, Oblix, Dhingana and Blue Lane Technologies. He also spent several years at HP leading their cloud efforts. He also led the $4.5B acquisition of Mercury Interactive. He is a prolific investor and currently at the helm of Tricentis, industry’s leading continuous testing platform.

Sandeep Upadhyaya is a consummate Sales & Marketing professional with over twenty years of experience at blue-chip Indian FMCG companies, & three years as an entrepreneur, building tech solutions for retail & mass transit. He has also briefly worked with a fast-growing online food delivery company as Consulting CMO.

Sean has spent almost 30 years as an entrepreneur and senior executive in the digital media and entertainment domain. He was previously the CEO of Bertelsmann’s RTL Video Group, and before that, served as President of MTV, GM/EVP of Discovery Communications and SVP at HBO, among others. He is passionate about digital transformation, new market growth and technology entrepreneurship. Sean has a B.A. from California Lutheran and an MBA from USC Marshall School of Business.

S.V. Mahadevan is associate professor of emergency medicine/surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine and founder & director of Stanford Emergency Medicine International. He was instrumental in setting up India's first international paramedic training institute, Nepal's first Emergency Medical Services system and Cambodia's first emergency medicine strengthening program. He was the lead editor of the textbook, An Introduction to Clinical Emergency Medicine, which received the 2006 American Medical Writer’s Association Award as the top US medical textbook for all specialties. Dr. Mahadevan has received numerous teaching awards including the Council of Residency Directors’ National Faculty Teaching Award and the American College of Emergency Physicians National Faculty Teaching Award.

Steve is an experienced Silicon Valley-based technology executive, investor, and Board member. Most recently, Steve was President of Stanford Research Institute (SRI) where he spent over 11 years. He is part of the faculty at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business (GSB). He has an MBA from Stanford and served on its Management Board for several years.

Talal is a technologist, Silicon Valley executive, computer scientist, entrepreneur, and investor. He has been the CEO at Intertrust, the leader in Digital Rights Management (DRM), since 2003. He led the team responsible for Intertrust’s success in patent licensing, has played a key role in the success of DRM in entertainment and media industry, and more recently in data-driven energy, sustainability, and other industrial transformations. Talal is an accomplished researcher and inventor in digital watermarking and secure systems and is a recognized authority in intellectual property licensing and open standards. Talal received his B.S., M.S. and PhD in electrical engineering from Cornell University.

Vijay is a serial entrepreneur having founded companies in cloud software, supply chain software, mobile advertising, and renewable energy. He has held management positions in business development, marketing, product management and finance within organizations. As an executive at one of the most successful cloud software companies from India, it is Vijay’s responsibility to scale the company globally.

Vinay is a seasoned technology executive, having spent over 30 years in senior roles at companies including Checkpoint Software, Webroot, Google, before joining JLL to craft and implement their digital strategy. Within Google, Vinay was the country head for products in India and global product manager for Google Maps and Google Local. Vinay has a B.S. from UC Berkeley and MBA from Kellogg School of Management.