MENTORS, TEAM & PARTNERS

Mentors

Ranjit Singh

Founder - Aspirelabs, Reimagine Plastic, Director & Mentor – Legistify & Member Board of Directors (Polyplex Corporation Limited)

Ranjit has over 30 years of experience in Industrial Management in Indian, International and Multicultural business environment. His core strengths include Corporate Growth and Turnaround Strategy and its implementation. He worked as Managing Director, Kalpataru Power Transmission(an Infrastructure Company) and Global COO & Board member of Polyplex Corporation Limited (4th Largest Polyester Film manufacturer in World). As a transformational leader he was significantly responsible for globalization and profitable growth of the companies that he led. Ranjit is based in Delhi and is deeply involved in the Start-up ecosystem and Strategy advisory space.

Sophie van den Berg

International Solid Waste Expert and Plastic Recycling Business Adviser ✔Africa ✔Asia ✔LatinAmerica at WASTE (www.waste.nl), The Netherlands

Sophie van den Berg is a chemical engineer and holds an MSc degree in Environmental Science. She has more than 25 years of international experience in assessment of solid waste management systems, economic and environmental viability analysis of resource recovery systems, and marketing studies for recyclables. She has the following expertise in private sector development: implementation, financing, and coordination of productive micro-projects in solid waste management including training and coaching for income generating activities aimed at SMEs. Other experiences include business development of (plastic) waste recycling plants, participatory planning, environmental sustainability, and gender equality, in emerging and developing countries. Her passion is to grow plastic recycling companies that generate social and environmental impact in Africa and Asia. She identifies early-stage impact businesses, supports them to be viable for scale and investment-ready and matches them with investment funds.

Purnendu Kumar Chaubey

General Manager Business Development, SB Energy(Softbank Group)

Currently Leading the Business Development and Grid affairs for SB Energy Private Limited (a Softbank Group Company).With professional experience of over 24 years in the field of Sales, Strategic Business Development, Design, Business Process Re-engineering, Policy Advocacy, Project Management, Marketing and Consultancy, he brings large network along with hand-on experience as a mentor. He also has been representing his current organization in various policy making and industrial bodies like CII, FICCI, Smart Grid Forum, IEEMA etc. and has been contributing with his white papers in sector journals and dailies. He has wide experience both in public and private sector. He is a graduate from IIT Kanpur and MBA from Asian Institute of Management, Manila, Philippines.

Arjun Sinha Roy

A graduate of BITS Pilani with more than 19 years of work experience in the Information Technology, Communication and Telecommunication domain. He has experience in large scale Transformation projects in the across companies like TCS, Comviva and OnMobile. Started the one of the first IoT startups in India and has worked at multiple start-ups and built one of the first Media Tech companies in the OOH sector. He has been working on the implementation of Deep Analytics and Predictive Modelling in the Cleantech Sector.

Mohan Krishnan

Marketing Researcher, MD TPCKI, visiting faculty-IIT Bombay,TERI University & IIFT Delhi & Kolkata

Mohan has over twenty-five years of experience in the research and consulting industry. His experience spans diverse sectors in the area of technology and marketing issues. He has advised private and public sector companies, associations, and forums in sectors such as Consumer goods, ICT, Energy, Environment, Logistics, Steel, Automotive and financial services markets. Mohan has contributed several articles and research papers on a wide range of subjects. He is also a regular speaker and a visiting faculty at IIT Bombay, TERI University and IIFT Delhi & Kolkata. He started his career as an engineer in sustainable development sector at Development Alternatives, moved to consumer research area at IMRB International where he later specialized in technology research before moving to head a sister company, Henley Centre, a marketing consulting. He returned to IMRB to head BIRD, a B2B and Technology research unit at Mumbai before moving to Delhi to head Consumer quantitative and SRI between 2008-2010. He also headed the quality improvement function both as an employee and as consultant between 2011-present before starting his NGO in education sector. He’s also advisory boards of a few start-ups: The Peninsula Centre – a think tank in using Geo-located information ,The Peninsula Studios and Buysmaart.com/Enixta. In addition, he’s a director at Centre for Marketing in Emerging Economies, IIM Lucknow.He is an MBA in Marketing Management from FMS & B.Tech. from IIT Delhi.

V M Chariar

Professor at IIT Delhi, Founder at JoyIsYou & Ekam Eco

Dr. Chariar’s current work integrates the principles of sustainable design with the traditional knowledge available with the indigenous communities.

He focuses on how these principles manifest in the housing and sanitation space. He has worked with the Ministry of Rural Development to launch the Rural Housing Knowledge Network. In the field of Ecological Sanitation, he is one of the co-inventors of Zerodor, a waterless urinal solution being used by more than 200 organizations in India and Africa.

Rakesh Bhartia

CEO - India Glycols Limited

Rakesh is CEO at India Glycols Limited (IGL) since August 2009, a Rs.3500 Crores (Approx $550mn) company having the distinction of being the largest Company in the world producing a wide variety of Green Speciality Chemicals from Molasses and Ethanol. In addition, IGL is also engaged in the business of Natural Gums, Industrial Gases, Nutraceutical Herbal Extraction and Potable Alcohol. Mr. Bhartia prior to joining IGL, was CEO of Bajaj Hindustan Ltd., India’s largest manufacturer of sugar and ethanol. He started his career in 1992 with ICICI Securities & Finance Company Ltd (a JV between ICICI and JP Morgan). He has worked in various Banks including Standard Chartered Grindlays Bank, Bank of America and Rabobank. He has wide exposure to investment banking, corporate finance and commercial banking related activities.

Mr. Rakesh Bhartia is also the Immediate Past President of Indian Chemical Council (ICC), the apex national body representing all branches of the Chemical Industry in India. Mr. Rakesh Bhartia, by qualification is a Chartered Accountant, Company Secretary and Cost Accountant.

Vijay Athreye

Vijay.S.Athreye

Co-founder - FINISH program, Chairman (FSMC)

Vijay cofounded the FINISH program in 2009 with Dutch Government assistance and has since been a member of its Program Management Board. FINISH essentially aims at bringing in elements of Financial Inclusion and healthcare to promote and implement development initiatives in Household Sanitation in Rural India.The program has now also been extended to Kenya and Vijay serves on its board as well. The FINISH program led to the founding of FINISH Society ( a not for profit NGO ) . More than half a million household sanitation assets have been facilitated under the FINISH program in India. In the year 2014 a for profit organization called FSMC of which Vijay is the chairman was registered to serve the commercial needs of development vide development franchisees in India . Earlier , Vijay conceptualized and remained at the helm of the Rural Micro insurance initiative at TATA-AIG Life Insurance till he left them in the year 2010 as VP and Head of Rural and Microinsurance..Vijay areas of interest include Rural development with emphasis on Sustainability, Public Private Partnerships and Financial Inclusion. Vijay holds a bachelors Degree in Chemical Engineering ,a Masters Degree in Business Administration, and is a Fellow of the Life Management Institute (LOMA – USA) as well as an Associate in Customer Service. Before his tryst with the Insurance Industry Vijay ’s services have been deployed in the fields of Turnkey Projects in Thermal Power Plants ,Wind Farm development, capital equipments, automobiles, consumer durables, charter aviation and Sales force automation software.

Prajakt Raut

Co-founder - Applyifi and The Growth Labs

Prajakt is an entrepreneur, mentor and entrepreneurship evangelist. His personal goal in life is to encourage and assist a 100,000 people to become entrepreneurs. He blogs on “The Hub for Startups” and via Applyifi.com helps startups get actionable insights and inputs on their business plans. Started a printing business at when he was 17, and later was founding member of a CRM solutions company. Prajakt has spent over 10 years in the advertising industry with agencies like Grey, Capital and DMB&B. Prajakt was previously the Asia Director of TiE. Co-founded Orange Cross, a healthcare services company. Prajakt was head of operations of the Indian Angel Network, one of the largest angel investor groups in the world.

Santosh Desai

Managing Director & CEO, Future Brands Limited

Santosh Desai is a columnist, media critic and the author of ‘Mother Pious Lady: Making Sense of Everyday India’. In his professional life, Santosh is the MD & CEO of Futurebrands, a brand and consumer consultancy company and has previously headed an advertising agency. Santosh’s principal area of interest lies in examining the evolving nature of consumer culture in India. Thought leader in understanding the relationship between culture and brands and the consumer as a product of his or her cultural context Author of ‘City City Bang Bang’, a weekly column in The Times of India.

Team

Abhinav Ramaria

Head- Programs and Operations

Abhinav is a Management Professional with over 16 years of experience in corporate and startup space. He has expertise in Business management, Life Cycle Assessment studies, Plastic Waste management rules and related Policy research and Advocacy.

He has rich onsite and corporate experience including his tenures at JSW Steels and Polyplex Corporation Limited. He has executed number of critical initiatives at the respective organizations. He is currently heading programs and operations at Aspirelabs. He is deeply into 1) Startup Incubation and Mentoring (with a special focus on Plastic Waste Management area) 2) Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies & Policy Research 3) Investment deal flow.

In additon, he has been speaker at number of international and national level seminars in plastic waste management space. He is a mentor at number of startup incubators like Startup Oasis, FLCTD (Facility for Low Carbon Technology Deployment), AIM Smart City Accelerator etc. He has recently started hands on Angel investing.

Anuj Kumar Maurya

Incharge - HR, Admin and Accounts

Anuj is taking care of Coworking visits, Accounts, Documentation, Payments and Office Maintenance. He has been part of the Aspirelabs team since 2019. He is responsible for Hiring and Interviews as well.

In past, he has industry experience of working with Hindalco.

Aspirelabs Mentors