Advisory Board

Shantanu Bhagwat

An engineer by training, Shantanu Bhagwat is a one-time diplomat turned venture investor and advisor to start-ups. These days he divides his time between UK and India, working with early stage companies and on ideas to improve political systems and governance in India.
In a career spanning two decades, Mr. Bhagwat has worked across geographies and industries, including several years in Japan and in the UK. Until recently a Partner at venture capital firm in London, Mr. Bhagwat has also worked at Monitor Co. in London. Prior to that, he spent several years as a fast-track career diplomat with the Indian Foreign Service, working in New Delhi and Tokyo. He is a personal investor in several start-ups in India and a Charter Member of TiE.
A graduate in Computer Engineering, Shantanu holds an MBA from London Business School where he was a Chevening Scholar.

Sumit Sirsikar

A consumer marketing professional, Sumit brings with him extensive multi-industry experience in brand/product management and business development roles, with leading MNC organizations in both India & APAC region.

His professional experience straddles marketing roles in the FMCG and Financial Services/ Credit Cards space. Starting his early career in the FMCG space with ITC Ltd and Godrej Soaps/P&G Godrej, Sumit subsequently headed marketing of the Personal Care Products business for Colgate Palmolive India from 1999 to 2004. In the financial products space, he has worked in credit card marketing/ product management roles with Standard Chartered Bank, before joining Prudential Asset Management in 2004. At Prudential, his 5-year stint included heading marketing for ICICI Prudential AMC in India, and then subsequently as Director Regional Marketing for APAC region based in Singapore.

At Innoviti, his focus is on providing guidance on refining our business development strategies in the marketing technology and payment systems space. Sumit did his Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Bombay in 1990, and subsequently his MBA from IIM Calcutta in 1992.

L. R. Narayanan

Over the last fifteen years LRN has been key to over 105 transactions in M&A,Venture and Private Equity and in strategic advisory. Has been in the forefront in helping new generation entrepreneurs and teams raising capital for and assisting such companies in their exit and inorganic plans.

LRN is a chartered accountant by profession and partner at Narayanan, Patil and Ramesh, Chartered Accountants, Bangalore.

Navin Kabra

A technology professional by choice, Navin brings with him over twelve years of experience in databases, search technology and enterprise infrastructure. His specialities are in the areas of distributed and fault-tolerant software systems;design and implementation of database systems.

He started his career with Teradata (formerly NCR) in the US before moving to Quiq. He then joined Symantec Research Labs, Pune as Senior Researcher before founding PuneTech a non-commercial portal for "interesting technology work" happening in Pune. Navin is currently the co-founder and CTO of BharatHealth.com offering software-as-a-service in the healthcare industry.

He has done his Ph.D. in Computer Science with Prof. David J. DeWitt, from University of Wisconsin, Madison and B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, Mumbai.

Rajeev Agrawal

Rajeev as the CEO of Innoviti, brings with him over fifteen years of experience in creating successful technology businesses out of India in the telecom, semiconductor and now with Innoviti in the financial services and retail markets. At Innoviti his attempt is to create a company that everyone associated with would be proud of.

Rajeev started his career designing radio telescopes at the Raman Research Institute, Bangalore and then continued work in the area of radio design at C-DoT. From 1995 to 2002 he was with Sasken Communications Ltd., Bangalore and headed their DSP, DSL and later Internet Access businesses as Vice President and Head. He has done his Bachelor's and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay, Mumbai.