VCCircle

Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the founder and promoter of One97 and has been on the board since our incorporation. He is currently responsible for the strategy and direction and leads the company in all areas relating to business expansion as well as product road map.

He draws from over a decade of exposure from telecom and new media in India. Vijay’s vision, strategy and direction have caused the company to grow multifold in a just a few years, making it India's pioneer in mobile internet services.

While still at college (Delhi College of Engineering), Vijay founded his first venture - XS Corps, which he later sold to Lotus Interworks LLC, New Jersey in 1999. Key roles across several companies followed: Riverrun Software Services Group Limited, Inter Solutions Software Private Limited, Startec Global Communications Limited.

In addition to encouraging enterprise within the industry, Vijay actively supports several NGOs. Music and gizmos are his other passions.

Sanjeev Bikhchandani, an Indian national, is our Founder and Executive Vice-Chairman. Mr. Bikhchandani obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from St. Stephen College, Delhi University in 1984 and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management ("PGDM") from IIM, Ahmedabad in 1989. His work experience includes an advertising position at Lintas India Limited, a marketing position at HMM Limited (now known as Glaxo SmithKline), and a senior management position at CMYK Printech Private Limited (owner of The Pioneer newspaper). Sanjeev, along with his partner Hitesh Oberoi, won the “Ernst and Young – Entrepreneur of the Year” award in 2008 for Business Transformation. He also won the Dataquest Pathbreaker Award & the Teacher’s Achievement Award for Business in 2008. Sanjeev is a frequent speaker on entrepreneurship at conferences and at business schools.

Vishwanath Alluri (Vish) founded IMImobile in 1999 to capitalise on the emergence of mobile data services and with a vision to harness the intellectual resources of India to develop an IPR centric technology company. Vish's vision is to create an Indian global technology powerhouse that alters the perception of India as a source of lower value added “services” to one in which India moves up the value chain to own its intellectual property.

Today Vish has envisioned and evolved IMImobile into a leading international player, with a global client portfolio of 96 telecom operators. IMImobile’s services are available to over 1 billion subscribers in over 72 countries.

IMImobile OPENHOUSE, Vish’s new initiative aims to democratize innovation, convert telecom networks into ‘smart pipes’ and unleash the creative prowess of the developer community to bring a wide range of applications and services to market.

Credentials and Accolades  
· A Chartered Accountant and a Company Secretary by academic qualification.
· CEO of the Year - voted by industry peers at the World Vendor Awards, London in May 2011
· Global Telecom Business Power 100 most influential people in world telecoms in 2010 and 2011
· Named among the 50 most important people in mobile content by Mobile Entertainment (a leading Publication from UK)

Amar founded Komli Media in October 2006, and since then has been at the heart and head of the operations. Amar is also the Founder and Chairman of PubMatic, the leading independent supply side digital advertising platform in the United States, with offices across the US, Europe, and India.

Amar has led a digital advertising business for Microsoft in the US. He has also worked at McKinsey & Co, and Netscape. As a student in Harvard University, Amar founded Chipshot.com, at the age of 19 with $350. Chipshot.com in 5 years grew to approximately $30M in annual sales and was at point the fastest growing e-commerce website.

As the Founder-CEO of Avenues India Private Limited, Vishwas has guided the company to become South Asia's No. 1 eCommerce service provider within two years of its launch. He oversees the strategic planning, execution, financial management and marketing tie-ups at Avenues.

The company's first initiative, CCAvenue® was launched in September 2001 and it today provides payment gateway services to thousands of eMerchants across the world. More than 85% of India's Web Merchants are using the CCAvenue payment gateway solution. The solution is India's largest direct debit engine, which connects to more than 50+ Indian banks in real time and processes all types of Credit Cards, Debit Cards and Cash cards. ResAvenue®, the second initiative is the fastest growing Hospitality solution in the Indian Sub-continent. Launched in 2004, more than 1000 hotel properties in Asia are using ResAvenue's state-of-the-art booking engine, distribution services and payment gateway services on their hotel websites. EventAvenue®, the third Initiative was launched in 2006 and was India's first and the industry's leading online registration and payment gateway software that is used by event organizers, corporations, schools, universities, associations, temples, non-profit and government organizations, and more, for conferences, trade shows, sporting events, class admission registrations, donation collection, webinars and other event managements. More than 600 conferences, exhibitions, webinars, class admission registrations, concerts and sporting events were powered by EventAvenue during the last calendar year making it one of the fastest growing online registration and payment gateway solution in South Asia. HotelsAvenue® is a solution for the travel agent that has been been launched in the year 2010. It addresses the travel agents, online intermediaries, portals etc. aspirations of having live feeds of instantly 'bookable room inventory' of over a hundred thousand global hotels on their own websites. More than 1,00,000 agents / affiliate network of ITZ Cash Card / One Stop Shop / Done Card / Oxygen's Oxicash / Multilink are currently using the HotelsAvenue solution to source Hotel Room inventory for their customers. The next few solutions, MembersAvenue®, and TrustAvenue® are some of the new initiatives in the pipeline.

Vishwas has been featured extensively in many publications and has been bestowed with many awards including the Asia-Pacific Information Security Leadership Award by (ISC)2 the non-profit global leader in educating and certifying information security professionals, in Bangkok in 2007 and an Excellence Award awarded by the Institute of Economic Studies for Avenues, a company he has founded and nurtured. Vishwas is also the Chairman of the Payments Committee of the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and is an active speaker at many Internet related forums.

Prior to founding Avenues, Vishwas was a practicing counsel on the Original Side of the Bombay High Court. He also co-founded the SEASONS Group of Companies, which owns the fashion brand 'SEASONS' (www.SeasonsIndia.com), which today is the top name in the branded Indian ethnic garments industry and is retailed at over 1500 top outlets in over a 100 cities around the globe. Vishwas is also involved in his family's construction business, which has constructed several landmark structures in India's financial capital, Mumbai. Vishwas is a Commerce graduate and holds a Degree of Law from the Mumbai University.

Satya Prabhakar is the CEO of Sulekha.com, one of the most popular Indian Internet sites, that pioneered the integration of classifieds and local search with social media in 50 cities. Sulekha partners with companies such as Vodafone, Reliance, Airtel, Sify to offer Classifieds and Yellow Pages services through mobile and online platforms. Sulekha serves tens of thousands of paying corporate and small-to-medium business advertisers using a ground-breaking "Response Guaranteed" model.

Satya raised $15 million from Indigo Monsoon Group and Norwest Venture Partners (NVP, Palo Alto). He grew Sulekha.com from two employees to more than 500 employees with 8 offices in India, US and Canada. He leads a team of world class professionals in developing revenue-generating services that were acclaimed by users, media and industry.

Satya was featured in ~ 500 news stories and invited to speak in ~ 200 conferences, industry gatherings and academic/corporate institutions, including Wharton, McCombs, ISB Hyderabad, IIT Bombay and NIT Singapore. Satya has authored nearly 100 technical and general interest articles. Satya's blogs/opinions/columns were published by Penguin, Mint/Wall Street Journal, Impact, Economist and Harvard Business Review.

He has ~ 20 years of experience in US and India in management, business development, strategy/technical roles at TCS, Philips, Honeywell and AT&T. Satya's expertise lies in building organizations, developing strategy and performance frameworks, recruiting and motivating high-skilled teams, marketing, technology, resource allocation and, most importantly, revenue growth and management.

Satya has won awards for technical/business leadership at AT&T and Honeywell. His interests include philosophy, investing, chess, tennis and writing. Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) recognized Satya with an award for entrepreneurship in 2008.

Satya is a Charter Member of The Indus Entrepreneur (TiE) and a member of CEO Forum and CEO Clubs. Satya lives in Chennai with his wife Sangeeta Kshettry and daughters Divya and Priya.

Hitesh Oberoi, an Indian national, is our Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Oberoi obtained a Bachelor of Technology degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 1994 and MBA from IIM Bangalore in 1996. At IIM he featured in the Director's Merit List. Mr. Oberoi has set up our sales and marketing operations and has been instrumental in launching new products and services at Naukri.com and has also helped set up the Jeevansathi.com, 99acres.com and Shiksha.com & other new businesses. Prior to joining us, Mr. Oberoi was the Regional Planning and Distribution Manager (North India) for the Ice Cream Division of Hindustan Lever Limited, the Indian arm of Unilever Plc, where he worked for almost four years. Hitesh, along with his partner Sanjeev Bikhchandani, won the “Ernst and Young – Entrepreneur of the Year” award in 2008 for Business Transformation.

Satyan Gajwani is the CEO of Times Internet Limited. Times Internet Ltd. is the largest Indian digital company, according to Comscore. Times Internet Ltd. owns and operates all major digital initiatives for the Times Group, including ventures in news, business news, lifestyle, music, video, local, e-commerce, deals, mobile, MVAS, and digital investments.. Satyan's goal is to operate Times Internet Ltd. as a collective of nimble startups with a dedicated focus on making each business a success in its respective vertical.

Satyan earned his Bachelors in Mathematical and Computational Science from Stanford University, and earned his Masters in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford as well. He previously worked at Barclays Bank in New York, and moved to India four years ago as Director of New Media for The Times Group.

With a broad range of hands-on experience founding, funding and supporting early-stage technology companies, Alok Mittal leads Canaan’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 joining the venture industry, Alok co-founded JobsAhead.com, a leading web-based recruitment business, which was acquired by Monster.com, the global leader in online recruitment. He also brings strong Telecom experience to Canaan having worked for Hughes Software Systems, the premium provider of telecom software services and systems in India. He has led Canaan’s investments in Bharat Matrimony, iYogi, Cellcast, UnitedLex and Chakpak.

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.

Founded by Harish Bahl, the Smile Group is India's largest privately held investment company in the internet industry with extensive holdings in digital media, e-commerce & retail infrastructure. The Smile Group has businesses with global leading corporates like WPP Group, Yahoo!, ScanGroup, Group Buying Global AG, BrandAlliance Group & operational agreements with other global leaders like Sabre Holdings (Travelocity) & comScore Inc.

As a thought leader on the digital space in emerging markets, Harish has been a speaker in several prestigious international forums such as DLD 2009 & TED and is on the Advisory Board of leading global entities such as WPP Digital & comScore Inc. He is also an active member of NASSCOM & was the Ex-Chairman of IAMAI (Indian Digital Advertisers Forum). He is also the recipient of “Udyog Rattan” by Institute of Economic Studies, India for his contribution to the digital industry in India.

In his current role at Jabong, Praveen is a Co- Founder and Managing Director of the company. Praveen’s role encompasses looking after the entire operations capability along with supply chain management, assisted sales, finance, human resources and administration. Jabong was founded in Oct 2011 and Praveen has played a critical leadership role in its phenomenal ramp up.

Prior to Jabong he was working with Mckinsey on transformation projects in South East Asia and India. He has worked in 4 different transformation projects across sectors viz. mines, steel, automotive and has done energy audits across Asia (China, HongKong, S E Asia and India). He is also the founding member of the startup – Aquabrim, which provides water management solutions for residential and commercial users.

Praveen has a keen interest in new business initiatives and has been part of various startups. He is passionate about entrepreneurship and shares his work experiences and learning at various institutes like IIMs,XLRI, Great lakes, Jamia Hamdard etc.

Sharad holds Electrical Engineering degree from Delhi College of Engineering. He has over 21 years of experience in the enterprise software and wireless infrastructure sectors. Prior to joining Yahoo!, he was involved in buyout activities focused on taking mid-sized software product companies private.

Previously, he was the India General Manager and VP of Product Operations with Symantec (formerly VERITAS Software) and was responsible for the turnaround of VERITAS operations in India. 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.

Bejul focuses on the firm's investment activity in India and brings over fourteen years of operating, entrepreneurial and investment experience in the US and India to his role at Lightspeed. His background and investment interests encompass technology and non-technology businesses, and he currently sits on the boards of Itzcash Card, Four Interactive and the Great Indian Restaurant Company. Prior to Lightspeed, Bejul was Co-Managing Director of Twiga Fiberglass, a leading manufacturer of thermal and acoustic insulation solutions in India and a partner of Saint Gobain, one of the largest building materials companies worldwide. Before moving to India, Bejul was Co-Founder and Principal Investor of Open List, a US-based vertical web-search company that was acquired by Marchex, Inc.

Previously, Bejul was on the startup team of edu.com, a strategy consultant with Bain & Company and an equity capital markets banker at Salomon Brothers. Bejul holds a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

A pioneer of online travel search in India, Aloke Bajpai is a technology entrepreneur with over 11 years experience in the travel industry. An electrical engineering graduate from IIT Kanpur, Aloke started his career at Amadeus in Europe, where he was part of the team that built the world's first web-based travel agency booking products. He went on to do an MBA at the INSEAD business school, and moved back to India in 2005. After a stint with FinalQuadrant Solutions where he led distribution strategy & business development, Aloke and his co-founders launched iXiGO.com in 2007. They bootstrapped and grew the business mostly by word of mouth to a market-leading position in Indian travel research and planning, aggregating content from over 150 travel sites in India and across the world.

Anupama is a serial entrepreneur, investor, business executive, technologist, and mentor.    

Anupama is National Chairman of CII – Yi (CII – Young Indians); Member of the CII National Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Council; Member of the CII International Policy Council and CII WTO and Trade Agreements Committee; Managing Director of The Hatch Fund; Co-founder of The Hatch Incubators; Co-founder of Angel Investors Consortium; and, Board Member of Athena Foundation – an international organization focused on women leadership

Anupama is Aspen Fellow under the India Leadership Initiative;  the recipient of the Athena India Leadership Award; Rotary International Young Achievers Award; “Award for Excellence - Women Entrepreneur” by Software Technology Parks of India, Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India; and “All India Outstanding Woman Entrepreneur for the year Award” by the Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council, Ministry of Information and Technology, Government of India.

As an entrepreneur she founded and led 3 companies in India and Silicon Valley.  Before starting on the entrepreneurial career, Anupama led many Software Development and Architecture initiatives at Lucent Technologies and Synoptics / Bay Networks.

Widely traveled, Anupama has spoken at a number of industry events, symposium and standard body meetings worldwide.  Anupama has been profiled in a number of media articles and has been featured on CNBC “Young Turks” program.

Anupama has taught topics on advanced communication technologies at UC Berkeley and San Jose State Universities.  Anupama has a Bachelor in Electronics and Communication Engineering and a M.S. in Computer Science.

Mr. M N Srinivasu is the Director and Co-Founder of BillDesk, a payment and remittance service providing venture of IndiaIdeas.com Ltd. Established in early 2000, BillDesk delivers and manages electronic payments and remittance solutions for various vertical markets, such as banking, telecom, insurance, utilities and financial services.

Prior to founding BillDesk, Vasu worked with Business Consulting unit of Arthur Andersen in India and before that, for over 9 years, with ITC Limited across their various businesses. Vasu completed his MBA from IIM Ahmedabad in 1990 and Bachelors degree in Commerce from Madras University in 1988.

Parimal runs the Emerging Customer's Group at Akamai where he is responsible for sales, marketing and services for global mid-market customers. Previously, he helped start Akamai's application acceleration business and led product management, business strategy and operations.

Prior to Akamai, he cofounded two start-ups in consumer media software and ecommerce sectors in New York City. He later served as an investment associate at a New York City based venture fund where he assessed and advised early stage venture capital investments in mobile, media and cloud infrastructure sectors.

Parimal earned an MS in Electrical Engineering and Management from Columbia University in New York. He lives in Bangalore now and  is an active participant in the Bangalore start up community.

Dr. Anu Vaidyanathan is the Founder of PatNMarks, an Intellectual Property Consulting firm with offices in Austin, Bangalore and Chennai. Anu is an active academic whose research interests include Telecommunications, Computer Engineering and Intellectual Property Law. She received her PhD in Electrical Engineering at UC Canterbury setting the Department and University record in 26 months. She has been affiliated with both the Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar and the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad teaching courses in Computer Architecture, Innovation and Business Policy. Anu is a regular speaker at forums on Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Leadership and a 2012 INK Fellow. Having started PatNMarks right out of college as a fledgling startup, Anu has modeled the long-term vision at PatNMarks to provide cost-effective advice and a high standard of deliverables. Anu is also an award-winning endurance athlete representing India in long-course triathlon.