WHY WE'RE HERE
Born and brought up in one of the world’s fastest growing economies, we experienced change as the only constant in our young India. With that new road, that new policy, that first e-commerce site, that first app-based cab ride, that first moon landing, the world around us kept evolving at a breakneck speed. Moved by this wave, we started wondering what are those little things that add up to the big change? Who are the change enablers? And how can we contribute to their cause?
So here we are, a team of finance enthusiasts, researching, developing, designing and counselling to make financing and finance a tad bit easier for visionary entrepreneurs and courageous investors.
Our Team
Ritwik qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2019 and graduated from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata majoring in Finance. Since 2019, Ritwik has been extensively working in the startup domain, in areas of deal documentation, financial due diligence, fundraising, deal negotiation and deal structuring, spanning Fintech, D2C, SaaS, Deeptech and Climatech sectors. Ritwik leverages his experience of having worked with multi-national conglomerates, to create value for early stage startups.
Ritwik is currently leading StartupIndia's operations in Mumbai, India.
'Building things’ and ‘Changing things’ encapsulate everything that I like to do. I started young with building houses with lego at age 6, moved on to building empires, playing Age of Empires on PC at age 14 to now, assisting Entrepreneurs and Investors to enable Change with the help of my expert financial guidance.
Ritwik Khator
Founder, Mumbai, India
Kartik-K graduated from St. Xavier's College, India, in 2018 and qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2019. He has 5+ years of experience working with startups and investors in areas of business valuation, funding, deal scouting, deal structuring and due diligence. He has worked with startups spanning Healthtech, SaaS, Defence, Deeptech, Climatetech, Fintech and D2C sectors.
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Kartik-K has been a venture partner for a UK based climatetech VC Fund for 3 years. During this time, he had the opportunity to work on deals of some of the most promising Indian startups in the impact domain. These deals spanned across Agritech, Healthtech and Climatetech sectors, from seed to Series B stages. His role as a venture partner included interacting with startup founders and management teams, research and analysis of the startup ecosystem of India, validation of startup's financial models and valuation, presenting to the investment committee members, deal sourcing and deal structuring.
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Kartik-K is currently leading StartupIndian's operations from Bangalore, India.
Kartikeyan Khator
Founder, Bangalore, India
Abhimanyu graduated from St. Xavier’s, India, in 2018, majoring in Finance. He was working with Bank of America with the Quant Trading desk for 3 years. He is currently pursuing Master’s in Financial Engineering from UCLA Anderson School of Management, Los Angeles. He is also a scholar at the Institute of New Economic Thinking.
I am a part of this initiative to further exemplify my interests in business models, organisation structures, disruptive technologies and other revolutionary projects. We realised that startups are very good at their domain of work and service, but may lack strategies to optimise their financial positioning. Startups have the potential to question the normal and revise proven business models redundant in the ever changing business landscape. The ability to revitalise the old but still follow the very basics to drive value is what intrigues me to write, research, learn, and share about startups.
Abhimanyu Gupta
Founder, Los Angeles, US
Our Advisors
Sameer with over three decades of strategic expertise began his career in the UK with Touche Ross (now Deloitte). After moving to India, he established a corporate consultancy that offered a range of services such as India entry strategy, corporate and financial management, and M&A advisory across a wide array of industry sectors.
In 2006, Sameer founded WiseWays, a boutique corporate consultancy specializing in legalized gaming and sports entertainment. WiseWays provides services such as corporate strategy, legal overview, product, marketing, and operational planning. Sameer also plays a significant role in promoting the sector internationally, having advised Sportech Plc of UK for over a decade on a ground-breaking India JV. He also serves as the Global Representative for All India Gaming Federation (AIGF) internationally promoting the sector.
Sameer Nandwani
Advisor, India
Maroo is a graduate engineer from BIT Mesra - class of '69. With a wide range of experience in various fields, and expertise in marketing, he offers consultancy to business enterprises. He is a former member of Board of Governors, National Institute of Advanced Manufacturing Technology. He has also served as a Director of PSB Oriental Bank of Commerce, now merged with PNB, as well as the President of Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of India.
Earlier engaged in the business of print and visual media, he later launched neversayretired.in – a resource for Senior Citizens towards Nation Building. He is also the brain behind BharatMahan.in – a portal for positive news.
Presently, he is actively involved in serving the community as a volunteer with Ekal, Vidya Bharati, and Param Shakti Peeth.
Vijay Maroo
Advisor, India
Domain Experts
Sanjay brings over 35 years of experience in the domains of business strategy, acquisitions, deal structuring, corporate development, sales, marketing and supply chain in healthcare, media, telecom and consumer durable sectors with leading Companies including Medica Synergie (7 years), Times of India (6 years), Hindustan Times (2 years), Ananda Bazar Patrika (4 years), South Korea Telekom (3 years) and Godrej (5 years).
He's presently the managing partner at Viva Healthcare, a healthcare consulting firm. In the past, Sanjay has served as the CEO of IQ City Foundation, a foundation promoting a medical college, a nursing college and a hospital and CEO of Medica Super speciality Hospital, a 350 bed super specialty hospital at Kolkata, promoted by Medica Synergie.
Sanjay Prasad
Healthcare Expert, India
With over 11 years of cross-cultural, professional experience in the IoT and Agriculture Industry, Shailendra has worked in both India and Poland. He excels in interacting with customers, sales, and engineering teams to develop products that benefit agriculture. His field of expertise includes Precision Agriculture, Digital toolkits for farming, IoT, UAVs, Robotics, and product development (both hardware and software, designed for low power and wireless off-grid deployments).
He has a B.Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering, as well as a Masters in Modern Digital Communication Systems focused on 5G, 6G, Edge Computing, Machine Learning, and IoT.
For the past decade, He's been associated with Yuktix (now part of the Multiplex Group of Companies). Prior to that, he worked at Silverline Design Inc as an MTS (which was later acquired by EFabless) and as an Engineer-Projects at Thinvent Technologies.