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We have a team of partners and advisors who bring rich operating, entrepreneurial and venture experience, have a strong brand in India and a well-established network in global markets.
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Ashish Gupta
Managing Director - Investment Advisor |
Ashish is a co-founder of Helion and serves on the boards of Anantara, Jigrahak Mobility, Kirusa, Komli, MuSigma, Naukri, and Virtual Synaptics. He has invested in over 35 companies in the US and in India. His investments include Daksh (IBM), Odesk, Obongo (AOL), Speedera (Akamai), Make My Trip, Merittrac, and Kaboodle (Hearst). Ashish co-founded and helped grow two successful companies; Tavant Technologies and Junglee (Amazon.com) that pioneered comparison shopping on the internet.
Ashish has worked at Woodside Fund, Amazon.com, Oracle Corporation, and IBM Research. He has to his credit several patents, international publications, and a book by MIT press. He is a Kauffman fellow, the world’s leading venture education program. He also holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree from IIT Kanpur, where he was awarded the President's Gold medal.
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Kanwaljit Singh
Managing Director - Investment Advisor |
Kanwaljit Singh is a co-founder of Helion and has over 20 years of experience in the areas of venture investing, marketing and business development across multiple sectors in India. He serves on the Boards of Jigrahak Mobility, Hurix Systems, Amba Research, Asian CERC and Textual Analytics Solutions. Prior to Helion, Kanwal was a Director and co-head of The Carlyle Group’s India venture operations for 4 years. At Carlyle, he helped define the strategy for Carlyle India, invested in over half a dozen Companies and worked closely with the portfolio Companies to help them accelerate their business.
Prior to Carlyle, Kanwaljit worked for 13+ years in the marketing and business development functions of Intel Corporation and Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (a subsidiary of Unilever, plc). As the Head of Marketing for South Asia at Intel, he spent about three years in building the Intel brand in India which included corporate branding, channel and OEM marketing and PR. Kanwaljit also spent over 10 years with Hindustan Unilever Ltd. in various jobs including sales, brand management and product innovation. He was rated as one of 25 ‘hottest young managers’ by Business Today, a leading Indian business magazine in 2002.
Kanwaljit has a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from Punjab University and an MBA in Marketing and Finance from Faculty of Management Studies, New Delhi.
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Sanjeev Aggarwal
Managing Director - Investment Advisor |
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 also served as the CEO of 3COM India.
Sanjeev has a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and an MBA.
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Rahul Chandra
Director - Investment Advisor |
Rahul is a cofounder of Helion and has 13 years of venture capital investing and corporate development experience in technology product and services companies in India and the US. He serves on the Board of United Lex.
Between 2000 and 2006, Rahul was based in Silicon Valley as part of the investment team at Walden International, a global venture capital firm with more than $2B under management. Between 2004 and 2005 he also led the M&A efforts at e4e Inc., a Santa Clara, CA based BPO company with more than 4,000 employees across the globe.
Rahul started Venture Capital investing in 1996 in India as the first hire at Walden's India office. In this role he managed investments for Walden's India dedicated Fund between 1996 and 2000.
Rahul has invested in more than 30 early-to-mid-stage companies such as Mindtree, Ikanos (IKAN), e4e Inc and Techspan (Headstrong). Prior to Walden, he worked in the Capital Markets Group at Lazard India, and in the Primary Market Department at the Securities Exchange Board of India.
Rahul has an MBA from University of California, Berkeley and graduated from Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani in 1993.
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Natarajan Ranganathan
CFO - Investment Advisor |
Natarajan (Nats) has over 18 years experience and serves on the Boards of Hurix Systems and Cambridge Technology Enterprises. Before joining Helion, Nats was Global CFO and Head of Support Services at Tavant Technologies. During his stint in Tavant he led key initiatives of strengthening and implementing several internal processes related to Finance, HR and IS; and championing organizational improvement programs. He helped Tavant grow to $60M in revenue.
Prior to Tavant, Natarajan was Chief Finance Officer and Chief Information Officer at Wipro ePeripherals. He worked for about 10 years in the Wipro group of Companies, in the areas of strategic business planning, financial services accounting, marketing, HR, Information services, finance and resources management, treasury and taxation. Nats contributed significantly to the profitability through treasury management, controllership and compliances. WeP was awarded the Best IT Usage Award by NASSCOM in the ICT Category in September 2003, an initiative led by Nats as the CIO.
He started his career in 1989 with SRF Limited, a manufacturing company based in Delhi. He is also on the advisory board of SCIT, (part of Symbiosis International University).
He holds an accounting degree from ICWAI and ICSI and is a certified black belt in Six Sigma.
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Dhruv Prakash
Director HR – Investment Advisor |
Dhruv has over 34 years of extensive and versatile industry experience in the areas of HR and Management Consulting, Financial Services, Corporate Finance, Manufacturing, International trade and Marketing.
Prior to joining Helion Dhruv was a consultant with Hewitt Associates. He has helped organizations in managing change, coaching senior management, building high performance, organization restructuring, and designing people strategies. His client list spans organizations in the Banking and Financial Services, Oil and Gas, Chemicals, Manufacturing, IT and Telecom and FMCG industries.
From 1994 to 1997 Dhruv was the CEO and whole time director on the Board of DCM Financial Services which he helped to grow from infancy to a mature business. From 1989 to 1994, as CFO of DCM Toyota he contributed to profit improvement and vendor development as well management of the joint venture relationship with Toyota. Prior to that he held senior positions in the finance function at Escorts, HCL and Amar Dye Chem.
Dhruv is a MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and a MSc in Chemistry from Meerut University.
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Rahul Chowdhri
Vice President |
Rahul Chowdhri has 9 years of experience working in strategy consulting, business planning, software product management and project execution in India and US.
Prior to joining Helion, Rahul was a Group Program Manager at Microsoft India. Between 2005 and early 2007, Rahul led the Microsoft Dynamics product planning and Office Live program management team. At Microsoft, Rahul also helped develop business strategy to build a web and mobile based business targeted towards Indian small businesses.
Prior to this, Rahul was an Associate Director at marketRx Inc., based out of New Jersey. At marketRx, Rahul was involved in business planning & development, running operations as well as managing the product for a market research focused business unit. Before joining marketRx, Rahul was a Senior Product Manager at i2 Technologies in Dallas. At i2, Rahul managed product features and handled key customer accounts for Distributed Order Management & Event Management products.
Between 1998 and late 2000, Rahul was a Management Consultant at Boston Consulting Group in India. As part of the BCG team, Rahul was part of strategy and operational projects across software, metals, machine manufacturing, oil exploration and banking verticals.
Rahul holds an MBA degree from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta and a B. Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.
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