Alok Mittal, General Partner, Cannan Partners

With a broad range of hands-on experience founding, funding and supporting early-stage technology companies, Alok Mittal joined Canaan in March 2006 to lead the firm’s India operations. In India, Alok focuses on investments in digital media and mobile companies, as well as innovators in managed software services.

Prior to Canaan, Alok was an entrepreneur and private investor, and was a founding member of Indian Angel Network (formerly, Band of Angels India). Committed to working hand-in-hand with entrepreneurs to build the next generation of successful Indian technology companies, Alok was instrumental in Canaan’s investments in BharatMatrimony, the world’s largest consumer Internet site for matrimonial services, and iYogi, which leverages the power of the Internet to offer high-quality, low-cost tech support to global consumers, and Cellcast, Asia’s leading participation content company.

Previously, Alok led the technology practice at Baring Private Equity Partners India, where he focused on investments in software services, BPO, the Internet and telecom. He was also co-founder of JobsAhead.com, a web-based recruitment business that was later acquired by Monster.com. Previously, he worked for Hughes Software Systems, the leading provider of telecom software and systems in India. He currently serves on the boards of Bharat Matrimony, Cellcast, iYogi and UnitedLex.

Alok earned a BE in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and a MS in computer science from UC Berkeley.

 

Dr. Anand Deshpande – Founder, Chairman and Managing Director

Dr. Deshpande earned a Bachelor's Degree (Hons.) in Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 1984. He also earned a Doctorate in Computer Science from the Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana (USA) in 1989.

He worked at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories as a Member of the technical staff in Palo Alto, California from 1989 to 1990 and has been a member of our Board since he founded our Company in 1990.

He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Computer Society of India (CSI) and the Young Presidents' Organisation (YPO). He currently serves on the executive committee of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) and Mahratta Chamber of Commerce Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA)..

He has been awarded the 'Ninad Award' for Outstanding Contributions to Science and Technology by the Ninad Foundation, Pune in 2007. He has been further awarded the Entrepreneur Award, in recognition of his contribution to the Information Technology sector at the Brihan Maharashtra Mandal Convention in Atlanta, USA in 2005 and was also awarded the Rotary Excellence Award by Rotary Club, Pune for his vision and leadership in the growth of the IT sector.

 

Anil Bakht, MD, Eastern Software Systems

Anil holds a degree in Computer Science from University of Toronto, Canada. He lived in Canada for 12 years working for organizations such as ESSO Petroleum and Bank of Nova Scotia before returning to India in 1985. After coming back to India he joined CMC Limited and was with the company for 5 years. During his stay with CMC he was responsible for the company's foray in the area of Bank Automation with his deep background in Banking. Later he took over as Head of Marketing for CMCs Northern Region. He also had a brief stint as General Manager of WTI, a Joint Venture between Westinghouse and Tatas. Anil along with Sanjay, founded Eastern Software Systems in 1990. Anil has been passionate about the need for development of Indian Intellectual Property Rights in the Global Software arena. He was a member of the "Task Force on Information Technology" set up by the Prime Minister of India. His inputs formed a part of the Task Force's recommendations, many of which have been implemented at the National Level. Anil is also recognized as a voice of the midsized IT businesses in India, and writes frequently for various publications.

 

Ajay Dhir, Group Chief Information Officer, JSL Limited

Ajay Dhir has given over 26 rich years in Information Technology and Systems with blue chip corporate in India. Dhir is a Post Graduate in Information Technology and Systems and Cyber Security and Forensic Science. This Six Sigma Green Belt also has a military training in the NCC and Indian Army.

Dhir started his career with International Systems Services, New Delhi in 1982 and since then, worked with leading companies like NIIT, JK Synthetics, Radico Khaitan, Fedders Lloyd, GATI, Hero Motors, GHCL, Indo Rama, & Uniparts Group.

At present, he is with JSL Limited (earlier known as Jindal Stainless Ltd.), flagship of the $12 billion O.P. Jindal Group as Group Chief Information Officer, based at the Corporate Office in New Delhi. His portfolio includes management of Information Systems Management, Information Technology and Information Security for the entire organization at a global level. He has set up and managed KPO operations in India for a large healthcare facility in Houston, TX. Worked as the Group CIO and Head of HR for Uniparts Group, an International player in the Agriculture, Hydraulics and Construction Equipment Industry, with manufacturing and distribution facilities in India, US and Netherlands.

 

Diwakar Nigam, Managing Director, Newgen Software Technologies

Mr. Diwakar Nigam, the Managing Director of Newgen Software Technologies founded Newgen in 1992. Mr. Nigam has been an active player at the national software level by being a founder member of NASSCOM (National Association of Software companies). He has been a member of Anti Piracy Task Group formed by NASSCOM.

Mr. Nigam has been pursuing the goal of building a world-class Product Development Company ever since his graduation and Newgen is the fulfillment of that goal. Newgen is involved in the development of Imaging Software and has made an impact in India and the global arena. Today, Newgen’s client list consists of Banks, Insurance Companies, BPOs, MNCs and big corporate houses. Many of them are listed among the top ten in the India Inc. Under Mr. Nigam’s dynamic leadership, a team of highly qualified software professionals develops software, which is totally indigenous.

Prior to forming Newgen, Mr. Nigam, along with a few colleagues, had incorporated (in 1978) Softek Limited, a product development company specializing in Compilers, Operating System, Office Productivity tools, etc. He also had a short stint working in the Software R&D of HCL during the years 1976-78.

Mr. Nigam is M.Tech. in Computers Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, of the 1976 batch.

Krishnakumar Natarajan, CEO and Managing Director, MindTree Ltd.

Krishnakumar Natarajan (KK) is the CEO and Managing Director of MindTree. In this capacity, he has the overall responsibility of both the IT Services and the R&D services businesses of the organization.

Until recently, KK served as President & CEO – IT Services for MindTree. One of co- founders, KK is responsible for taking the company’s IT Services to a global leadership position.

In the early years of MindTree, KK moved to the U.S. to launch its operations in the region and was instrumental in acquiring some of the early customers for the organization. He then drove MindTree’s expansion into Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Australia.  As a result of his leadership, MindTree has added several Fortune 500 companies to its client list and has now grown to make a guidance of $186 million business for 2007-08.

Prior to co-founding MindTree, KK was Chief Executive of the Electronic Commerce & Financial Solutions Division at Wipro, and held several other key positions in the same organization from 1982 until 1999.  During the growth phase of Wipro’s software business, KK started and grew the e-commerce division of Wipro, developing a team of 300 people and generating $30 million in revenues annually. Earlier , while serving as Group Vice President of human resources, KK increased the number of employees in Wipro’s software services business from 800 to over 4,000 people.

 

Manu M. Parpia, Founder and Vice Chairman Geometric Ltd and Chairman of 3DPLM Software Solutions Ltd.

Mr. Manu Parpia is the Founder and Vice Chairman of Geometric Ltd. and Chairman of 3DPLM Software Solutions Ltd. He has over 30 years of experience in the industry, with over 21 years in the PLM and Engineering arena. He is one of the pioneers in this arena in India.

He served as the Chief Executive of the Electronic Business Equipment Division of Godrej & Boyce from the mid eighties to 1999. During this period, he also founded Godrej Pacific, a joint venture between Tech Pacific and Godrej & Boyce, and served as its Managing Director from 1995 to 1999. In his activities with Godrej, he oversaw the design, development, manufacture and distribution of a variety of high-tech products. He served as the Managing Director of Geometric from 1994 to 2006.

Mr. Parpia started his career as an engineer with Humphreys & Glasgow Consultants Pvt. Ltd. (H&G). Inspired and mentored by Naval Godrej and Vasant Seth, he later founded K. Wadia Exports Pvt. Ltd., a company manufacturing cast gold jewellery for export, and First Financial Compuserve Pvt. Ltd. which promoted the use of computers in the area of finance. He was the President of Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology (MAIT) in 1997-98.

Mr. Parpia holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from McGill University, Canada; an MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, USA; and a Diploma in Finance & Accounting from England. His areas of specialization include international marketing and business development, business strategy and commercialization of technology.

He is an Advisory Board member of Alchemy Capital Management and a Charter Member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), an association with a mission to spread and support the culture of entrepreneurship. He Chairs the Mentoring effort at TiE, Mumbai.

 

Navyug Mohnot, CEO & Founder, QAI India

One of the pioneers of India’s quality and competitiveness movements in the software and ITES-BPO sectors. A B.Tech from IIT Delhi, Navyug quit his Ph. D. programme at the University of Rochester where he went on a Fellowship, to return to India in 1993 and pursue his dream of `Facilitating India’s leadership in software intensive businesses’, a visionary move at a time when the software industry was still nascent. Having partnered in India’s success journey, QAI is now taking India’s best practices to the world with a client list that includes Government of Singapore, Deloitte Consulting, Accenture, Cap Gemini Ernst and Young, Intel, Sony, to name a few. QAI India has wholly owned subsidiaries in Singapore, Malaysia, China and Hong Kong and is working towards fully owned entities in the west.

Sanjeev Aggarwal, Co-Founder of Helion

Sanjeev Aggarwal is a co-founder of Helion and serves on the Boards of Amba Research, Anantara, Make My Trip, Mindworks Global and United Lex. Prior to Helion, Sanjeev was the Founder and CEO of Daksh, having been with the company from its inception in 2000 to its acquisition by IBM in 2004. Sanjeev ran the company as its CEO till June 2006. Daksh was a pioneer in BPO sector in year 2000 and had over 20,000 employees by June, 2006. During this period, Daksh was rated as the World’s Best Managed BPO company (Black Book of Outsourcing) and was ranked as the #1 employer in Indian BPO market by IDC. Sanjeev was chosen “Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the year” in 2002.

Prior to founding Daksh, he worked for 15 years with leading technology companies serving the domestic Indian market. Sanjeev led the Strategic Initiatives at Motorola India. He worked with Digital Equipment Corporation in delivering technology solutions and was recognized as the “Decathlon Winner”, a recognition given to top 1% managers worldwide. He has also served as the CEO of 3COM India.

Sanjeev has a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and an MBA.

 

Sharad Sharma - Non Executive Chairman, Movico Technologies

Most recently Sharad was the CEO of Yahoo! India R&D and was responsible for emerging markets engineering and several key global products. He has 23+ yrs of experience in internet, software and wireless sectors involves a turnaround (of VERITAS India ops), a startup (now part of Cisco), and an intrapreneurial setup of AT&T/Lucent’s R&D in India.

He is an evangelist for developing technology product businesses in India and participate in efforts to nurture the supporting ecosystem. Sharad is currently the chair for the NASSCOM Product Forum, actively mentor startups, and speak frequently on industry issues.

He was earlier a co-founder and CEO of Teltier Technologies, a New Jersey based wireless infrastructure start-up that became the leader in the Presence and Availability Management space and is now part of Cisco.

Sharad has managed product development teams at Lucent Technologies both in US and in India. He also setup AT&T’s and later Lucent’s R&D organization in India in mid-90s, at a time when offshore product development was just getting underway.
He started his career with DCM Data Products, in their software R&D group in New Delhi, where he was working on developing UNIX server platforms based in i86 architecture. Later he had a stint, as an early stage employee, with an Apple supported start-up where he learnt how the absence of marketing skills can derail a good product business.

Vijay Anand, Entrepreneur, Founder of Proto.in, The Startup Guy!

Vijay Anand, an Indian entrepreneur, passionate and driven by technologies related to the Mobile, VoIP, and Emerging Internet space, with a wide range of interests from simple economics to biotechnology and genetics, with a biased corner for anything related to artificial intelligence and neuro-science.

The Curator of Proto.in, the startup ecosystem body, and has been a driving force in being involved in community events such as Barcamp Chennai, Blogcamp, Wikicamp, Podworks, Open Coffee Club in Chennai and seeding such similar initiatives across the country.

EMERGE 50
Announcement - 18th July 2010
Showcase of companies – 26th – 30th July 2010
Winners – Top Ten – 25th August 2010

 

 

Updated on: 25 Aug, 2010