Ashish Sonal
Class of 2002

Previous Occupation: Special Forces
Current Occupation: Founder, Orkash, first-of-a-kind truly integrated global player in the field of intelligence and risk management
Sector: Research and Development
Work Experience: 13 years
Professional Interests: AI and expert systems, game theory, geo-politics, terrorism, and cyber forensics
Personal Interests: Adventure sports, and wild life photography

Diversity-The Key to Success

Ashish Sonal’s career could not have been more diverse – a Special Forces officer, assignments with the United Nations in Africa, the Country Manager of a leading international risk management consultancy, and now an entrepreneur as the Founder of Orkash Services and Orkash Labs.

He served with the Special Forces for 13 years, where he was involved in a number of strategic intelligence and combat missions of national level significance. Wounded twice during the course of these, Sonal is the proud recipient of the Vir Chakra for gallantry.
It was during the initial days of his corporate tenure at the risk management consultancy that Sonal realised the need to have a comprehensive understanding of the complex business issues. This was one of the primary reasons for applying to the Post Graduate Programme in Management at the ISB.

The Founding Batch

Sonal was one of the lucky applicants who got to form the founding batch of 2002 at the Indian School of Business. He feels ISB was a turning point in his life. Apart from the truly global knowledge base that he gained here, being the President of the Student Affairs Council of the inaugural batch, Sonal gained an extraordinary experience and insight into the dynamics of talented teams and leadership.

“My experience at ISB helped hone the leadership and entrepreneurial qualities within me and support me in my present endeavour,” he says.

The Entrepreneur Within

“Somewhere, I felt that the entrepreneur in me was still seeking new challenges and I wanted to create an engine for innovation where the ideas would have no constraints whatsoever,” Sonal reflects. He founded Orkash and just over a year since its inception, it is already setting standards in the industry and has earned valuable brand reputation with a client base of leading Fortune 1000 companies and international financial institutions.

Sonal is leading R&D projects for creating enterprise level decision support platforms. These aim to integrate the fields of operational risk management, market intelligence, competitive intelligence, geographic intelligence, information discovery, and forensics. “Ultimately, my vision is to create Orkash as the first-of-a-kind truly integrated global player in the field of intelligence and risk management.”

He has been a frequent speaker at national and international forums on risk management and business intelligence. Sonal has also been awarded the Times Fellowship for his field research work covering the human behavioral patterns in terrorism and insurgency. This was later published as a book entitled Terrorism & Insurgency in India – a study of the human element. When not thinking business, he loves indulging in adventure sports, photography and is passionate about wildlife.