The Advisory Council
Ashish Gupta
Ashish is a founding Managing Partner of Helion. He serves on the boards of Naukri, Mu Sigma, Anantara, Virtual Synaptics, Ji Grahak, Kirusa, and Komli. He has been an entrepreneur and an investor in the US and in India, investing in over 35 companies. 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 which is a 1000+ person IT services company, 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 from the prestigious Center for Venture Education, the world’s leading venture capital 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.
Ashish is a founding Managing Partner of Helion. He serves on the boards of Naukri, Mu Sigma, Anantara, Virtual Synaptics, Ji Grahak, Kirusa, and Komli. He has been an entrepreneur and an investor in the US and in India, investing in over 35 companies. 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 which is a 1000+ person IT services company, 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 from the prestigious Center for Venture Education, the world’s leading venture capital 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.
Sanjay Anandaram
Sanjay is a founding Partner of JumpStartUp Venture Fund since 2000, one of the earliest early stage US-India cross border VC funds. He has close to two decades of experience as an entrepreneur, VC, advisor and corporate executive.
As a passionate advocate of entrepreneurship, he writes and speaks frequently nationally and internationally on entrepreneurship, startups and VC. His column Indipreneur is published in the Financial Express and on startup blogs. He's involved with TiE Bangalore (as Charter Member and co-chair of the TiE Entrepreneur Acceleration Programme), Nasscom (as part of the Product and Innovation group), with IIM-B (as member of the NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning), with INSEAD (as Adjunct Faculty teaching the Business Plan Workshop elective).
Sanjay is a founding Partner of JumpStartUp Venture Fund since 2000, one of the earliest early stage US-India cross border VC funds. He has close to two decades of experience as an entrepreneur, VC, advisor and corporate executive.
As a passionate advocate of entrepreneurship, he writes and speaks frequently nationally and internationally on entrepreneurship, startups and VC. His column Indipreneur is published in the Financial Express and on startup blogs. He's involved with TiE Bangalore (as Charter Member and co-chair of the TiE Entrepreneur Acceleration Programme), Nasscom (as part of the Product and Innovation group), with IIM-B (as member of the NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning), with INSEAD (as Adjunct Faculty teaching the Business Plan Workshop elective).
Laura A Parkin
Laura is the Executive Director of the Wadhwani Foundation, where she leads the foundation’s investments in non-profit programs. The overarching mission of the foundation is to create more economic opportunities for individuals in India. The foundation works in two areas: developing business entrepreneurs, and helping the disabled build livelihoods or achieve gainful employment.
Laura is also the Executive Director and co-founder of the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), the foundation’s key program. NEN is a leading catalyst for entrepreneurship education in India. Since starting NEN in 2002, Laura and the NEN team have built NEN to include over 280 top tier institutes across 27 cities. NEN is helping develop a pool of over 450 entrepreneurship faculty members, and reaches over 300,000 students.
Prior to this, Laura was a Vice President at Ashoka, an organization that identifies and supports leading social entrepreneurs in over 40 countries. She is a serial entrepreneur, having founded four companies, and former venture capitalist at Highland Capital Partners in Boston, Massachusetts, where she invested in health care companies. In the early 90’s she successfully helped established a merchant bank in Moscow on behalf of the investment firm Aldrich, Eastman and Waltch. Currently, she is also an Advisor for Acumen Fund’s Water Portfolio. Laura was born and brought up in Hong Kong, and holds a B.A. from Harvard University.
Laura is the Executive Director of the Wadhwani Foundation, where she leads the foundation’s investments in non-profit programs. The overarching mission of the foundation is to create more economic opportunities for individuals in India. The foundation works in two areas: developing business entrepreneurs, and helping the disabled build livelihoods or achieve gainful employment.
Laura is also the Executive Director and co-founder of the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), the foundation’s key program. NEN is a leading catalyst for entrepreneurship education in India. Since starting NEN in 2002, Laura and the NEN team have built NEN to include over 280 top tier institutes across 27 cities. NEN is helping develop a pool of over 450 entrepreneurship faculty members, and reaches over 300,000 students.
Prior to this, Laura was a Vice President at Ashoka, an organization that identifies and supports leading social entrepreneurs in over 40 countries. She is a serial entrepreneur, having founded four companies, and former venture capitalist at Highland Capital Partners in Boston, Massachusetts, where she invested in health care companies. In the early 90’s she successfully helped established a merchant bank in Moscow on behalf of the investment firm Aldrich, Eastman and Waltch. Currently, she is also an Advisor for Acumen Fund’s Water Portfolio. Laura was born and brought up in Hong Kong, and holds a B.A. from Harvard University.
