Dharmik Chheda

President

Dharmik has experience of bootstrapping an AI start-up in his college days. His start-up primarily worked in the domain of Computer Vision developing customized AI models and algorithms for various industries - banking, tech, retail, government. After his stint, he joined his family business Chheda's, a global snack brand present over 60+ countries. His role as Sales and Strategy Head involved developing marketing strategy, scaling sales channel and optimizing supply chain. His core expertise lies in developing launch and expansion strategies for products in FMCG space.

Dharmik is a commerce graduate from Narsee Monjee, Mumbai. His core interests lies in researching about core tech disruptions in AI, Blockchain, Web 3.0. He loves to play Cricket and Badminton in his free time. Game development and designing are some of his secret hobbies.


Riya Agarwala

Vice President

Riya started her entrepreneurial journey at the age of 20. She has always been a problem solver and while working in her family business of mining, processing, and export of industrial minerals such as Mica and Quartz when she found a market gap, she knew she could come up with a better solution and started her own venture ACROSTONE- processing and export of decorative Pebbles, Gravels and Cobbles. Within a span of 3 years she exports to US, UK, UAE, Indonesia, and Japan. She is also very excited about the growing D2C space in India and plans to start a D2C brand soon.

By education, Riya did her BCom Hons from St Xavier’s College, Kolkata. Riya is a big foodie, loves singing and chooses to travel whenever she gets a chance to.


Shagun Kumar

Chief Initiative Coordinator

After graduating from NIT Trichy, Shagun worked with Piramal Group at their Chairman's office overlooking financial services and realty business. Having worked across different projects revolving around post-acquisition strategy, optimising firm AOP execution strategies, to supporting in building the midterm strategy for the conglomerate across these 2 emerging businesses, he realized that he loved creating value hands-on while working across functions. He joined Fashinza (a Series B funded B2B apparel manufacturing startup) as a Strategy and Operations Manager wherein we built a category(in sportswear apparels) servicing $6Mn + ARR GMV in demand for customers in India, MENA and the US from scratch, with a dedicated supply network across India, China, Bangladesh and Vietnam. He got to learn a lot about building from 0 to 1 from this experience and peers.

He loves reading non-fiction novels and is a Web3 enthusiast. Being a crazy music lover, he is also guitarist at heart who wishes to learn to play the saxophone someday.


Inayat Pawar

Alumni Relations Coordinator

Inayat has over 4 years of experience and has worked at Invest India and Teach For India. 

She has worked with several social entrepreneurs at ideation as well as incubation stages and is passionate about grassroot level impact. She has also represented India at Ministry of Commerce and Industry events and led initiatives for Indian startups, from getting them recognised to connecting with corporates, investors and global startup bodies.


Purvika Gupta

Marketing & Events Coordinator

Purvika has over 4 years of experience across multiple sectors including the non-profit sector, government consulting and research. Within the social impact space, her work revolved around driving business solutions to poverty and improving effectiveness of government spending. She has also worked with the School for Social Entrepreneurs India which fuelled an interest in the evolving EVC space.

After completing Bachelors in in Mathematics from Lady Shri Ram College, Purvika pursued the Young India Fellowship, a course in liberal studies from Ashoka University. She enjoys playing ultimate frisbee and trying new cooking recipes. 


Gaurav Gupta

Start-up Coordinator

Gaurav began his entrepreneurial journey at the age of 17. He has started-up ventures in the creator economy and AgriTech spaces and worked as a part time Venture capitalist for 6 months now. His formal work experience comes from his time in his family's Mining industry. 

He has a B.Com honours in finance and has cleared all 3 levels of the CFA program. He lives by the philosophy that A Jack of All trades is the master of none, but far better than a master of one!


Devang Jain

VC Coordinator

Devang has close to 2.5 years of experience in the venture studio ecosystem with Favcy Venture Builders. As an associate, he focused on sourcing relevant founders, evaluating their startup ideas and making these ideas investment ready. Having closely worked with Openbook VC during his last stint, Devang was able to interact and learn from key stakeholders in the venture capital space. He has also worked on the creation of company-controlled Angel Networks and worked on launching a product for aspiring startup founders.

He is very passionate about the potential of the Indian startup ecosystem and the emergence of new innovations in the field of technology. A management graduate from Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, Devang is an avid football fan and loves to travel and explore.


Dhruv Shetty

Events Coordinator

Dhruv has close to 3 years of experience in the Consulting and Venture capital Industry. He has worked closely with Fortune 100 clients as part of a procurement transformation project. He has also interacted with and evaluated 130+ early-stage startups, onboarded investors and hired associates as part of the Investment team of an Angel network.

Dhruv is an Electrical Engineer from College of Engineering Pune. An ardent Manchester United fan, he attributes Chess, distance running and Cinema as his source of zen. Further, in his free time, He enjoys reading up World History.


Rahil Dutt

L&D Coordinator

Rahil is an ex-investment banker who worked with Citi for two years. After crazy work hours in banking, he decided to take it up a notch and joined an AI/ML startup (Trusting Social) as chief of staff, pivoting later to product management. In his most recent stint, he was an entrepreneur-in-Residence at a health tech startup called Kenko, working across operations, digitisation, and product.

Rahil finished his undergrad from Shri Ram College of Commerce in 2016. You can talk to him about tech, venture funding, and start-ups.