'THE PITCH' is a unified platform that helps startup founders pitch their business idea to the best suited investors across the country through pitch sessions, investor lounge with 500+ startups and 50+ investors in Bengaluru, New Delhi and Mumbai.
The platform also provides access to an exclusive disruptor data hub, aa platform incorporating in-depth data and comprehensive analysis on startups and investors.
Pitching Sessions
The Disruptor Data Platform
Akshay Ghulati is the Co-founder, Shiprocket Global & Strategy, a leading tech-enabled e-commerce fulfilment platform in India. Akshay leads the Strategy and Global Expansion team and is responsible for managing the overall revenue functions of the business including marketing, account management and customer service. His key responsibility is to make Shiprocket the most trusted logistics and fulfilment platform for e-commerce sellers.
Akshay has an exemplary academic background and extensive experience in the e-commerce industry. Having graduated from the prestigious Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania with a BSc degree in Economics he then went on to pursue his MBA from Harvard Business School. Akshay joined Shiprocket in 2016 as the Chief Business Officer and in January 2020 he was appointed as a Co-founder.
Throughout the course of his career, Akshay has worked with notable organizations in senior positions. Prior to joining Shiprocket, Akshay was associated with e-commerce heavyweight Amazon in the UK where he served as a Senior Manager for the Pan-Europe FBA division. Before joining Amazon UK he worked with Smile Interactive Technologies as Director for Incubations and Investments. He was also associated with A.T. Kearney as a Senior Business Analyst at the start of his career and later with The Parthenon Group in the UK as a Principal.
With exceptional business acumen, Akshay’s career features several milestones. He was the youngest full-time employee for A.T. Kearney India post his bachelor’s degree at a time when the firm only hired MBA graduates. Akshay also helped set up the United Stock Exchange, which was the 4th pan India stock exchange. The organization was later acquired by Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Akshay was also recognized as the top performer at Amazon and was awarded the Just Do It award.
Akshay plans to make Shiprocket the leading SME e-commerce fulfilment platform both in India and key international markets. Passionate about the food supply chain in India Akshay is learning more about sustainable farming. A movie buff, he loves travelling and playing poker. He also frequently works with and supports NGOs that work towards educating girls.
Benoît is an entrepreneur with over two decades of experience in technical and innovative fields, particularly inspired by innovation in sustainable mobility. Benoît holds an engineering degree in electronic systems from Supelec in France and an MBA from INSEAD.
He led complex projects in the aerospace industry with Thales and in the railway industry with Bombardier working with many different cultures in 5 countries. He later joined Nexus Automotive International with a mandate to manage innovative projects and new models for the automotive aftermarket sector.
Benoît founded SPARKER in December 2022 with the ambition to accelerate innovation in sustainable mobility by finding new ways to connect startups with the automotive sector.
Harsh Parekh is the Co-Founder and Whole-time Director of API Holdings, India's largest digital health platform. The group has businesses and brands like PharmEasy, Retailio, DocOn, Aknamed, and Thyrocare.
Harsh finished his graduation in computer engineering from DJ Sanghvi College of Engineering and post that he did his MBA in Marketing from NMIMS in 2009-2011. He was the founder member of Ekagrata (NGO for Children's education), ACM (International student body), and Secretary of Rotaract Club. He started his career ITC and then joined Bharti Airtel as part of Young Leader Group. After briefly working for one year, he decided to start the entrepreneurship journey with two friends. They are the first health tech unicorn and recently created history by acquiring the listed company Thyrocare.
Harsh looks after the Channel and Platform Business and has been responsible for scaling the business over the last 9 years. He leads the group's efforts in retailer, hospital, fintech and brands. He has recently been featured in the Fortune 40 under 40 lists and is now an active angel investor in new-age companies.
Hardika Shah is the Founder & CEO of Kinara Capital, a socially conscious FinTech that is powering the financial inclusion of small business entrepreneurs in India.
While studying at Columbia Business School, Hardika was highly motivated to address the missing middle credit gap for MSMEs that stifles entrepreneurship in India, the land of jugaad. The success of the business school pilot became the genesis of her journey into social entrepreneurship and she wrapped up her life in Silicon Valley and headed to Bangalore to build Kinara Capital.
Prior to launching Kinara, Hardika had built a storied career in Management Consulting with Accenture and worked on complex projects across multiple industries and countries. She still made time to serve as a pro-bono mentor for many years at top social entrepreneurship programs at Santa Clara University, Stanford University, Columbia University, Accenture Development Partnerships and the Acumen Fund.
Globally recognized for her passion and innovative approach, Hardika is a notable Ashoka Fellow, won the Financial Inclusion Award by Sankalp Forum, and won the People’s Choice Award at Wall Street Journal’s Financial Inclusion event.Hardika holds a B.A. in Computer Science from Knox College in Illinois. She earned her MBA from a joint program with Columbia Business School and UC Berkeley-Haas School of Business.
Karthik Prabhakar is Managing Partner at PeerCapital, an early stage tech focused VC fund.
In his previous role where he was Managing Director and Partner at Chiratae Ventures, he has donned multiple hats as global head of fundraising as lead investment advisor in many companies some of which went on to be among the best outcomes for the firm.
A few notable investments as lead advisor include PlaySimple Games (acquired by MTG), Fibe / EarlySalary , NestAway, PlayShifu and others.
He has been part of the Indian tech ecosystem since 2005 with experience spanning engineering, product development, marketing, fundraising, investment advisory and fund management.
Prior to Chiratae, Karthik worked with Intel in their Ideas to Reality team, a technology incubator focused on building IoT products. As a tech marketing person, he played a key role in rapid prototyping, conceptualizing field trial plans and creating Go-To-Market strategies for new product ideas. He has also worked on developing innovative embedded solutions and has co-authored a patent in the area of Wireless Networks.
Nandini Mansinghka is the CEO of Mumbai Angels, a premier platform for startup and early-stage venture investments, based out of India.
One of the key architects of the start-up investing ecosystem in India, Nandini is passionate about democratizing investments in early stage start-ups, making this asset class an integral part of any meaningful investor portfolio. She believes investors need to allocate 4-5% of their portfolio to start-up investing and follow a two-pronged strategy of discipline while building the portfolio alongside hunting for multi-bagger unicorns.
Nandini has been a serial entrepreneur and angel investor since 2010. She had founded Idyabooster, a platform for investments in content and Digibooster, a data-driven influencer marketing platform. Nandini was on the board of TIE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) Mumbai for a couple of years. In her corporate avatar for about 12 years, she held senior positions in J.P. Morgan and Bennett Coleman and Co. Ltd (Times of India Group).
Pranav Parikh is the Managing Partner and heads Private Equity at Nuvama Asset Management. He has over 20 years of successful investment experience in US and Indian Markets.
He has a long-standing buy-side experience across the most sophisticated capital structures and various strategies including public and private equity as well as credit strategies.
Having been credited for creating one of the first successful incubation in India by a foreign fund and the first 100% private equity owned company to have raised $100 million in secured debt locally in India. He has been recognized in the past as Private Equity Deal Maker of the Year, India by the Global M&A Network, New York.
Pranav has led early stage investments in Edelweiss and sits on the board of companies such as Bridgei2i Analytics solutions (Data analytics, AI, Digital Enterprise), Tonbo Imaging (Electro-optics and sensing technology) and Revv (car sharing and subscription platform).
He is C.F.A. charter holder from CFA Institute, USA and holds a B.E. in Industrial Engineering from MS University, Baroda and graduated with honors in the M.B.A. program from University of Texas at Arlington, with a concentration in Finance.
Sheetal Bahl is one of the founding Partners of Merak Ventures, a sector agonistic venture capital firm based in India. Drawing on more than a decade of experience in the Indian startup ecosystem, combined with seven years focused on B2B and emerging technologies, Sheetal has honed his ability to spot emerging tech companies with the potential to transform the game.
As the driving force behind deal sourcing at Merak Ventures, Sheetal evaluates investment opportunities in a wide range of sectors, from ClimateTech, AgriTech, SpaceTech, to cutting-edge artificial intelligence and ubiquitous technology. Sheetal is known for his bold and audacious approach to investing.
Together with his fellow founding Partner, Manu Rikhye, Sheetal launched Merak Ventures with a target corpus of $100 million. The goal is to support passionate founders with ideas that matter, ideas that can make a positive impact on the world.
Sheetal is also a founding General Partner at growX Ventures. At growX, Sheetal played a key role in establishing an angel syndicate that made a number of successful investments such as Locus, Mad Street Den, and Quandl. Thereafter, he was instrumental in setting up growX Fund I, a $25 million fund that built upon the same investment thesis. His investments from the fund include Pixxel, Cynlr, and Cosmofeed among others. As a board member, Sheetal remains deeply involved in these ventures, providing strategic guidance and support to their founding teams.
Before venturing into the world of venture capital, Sheetal played a significant role in setting up the Everest Research Institute where he led the analysis of the offshoring industry. He also spent several years in management consulting with Andersen Consulting/Accenture and was part of the founding team of the credit cards business at ICICI where he managed the technology front.
Sheetal earned his B.Tech. in Elec. Engineering from IIT Bombay, and his extensive experience and unique perspective have made him a respected figure in the world of venture capital. He continues to drive innovation and support the next generation of startups with his visionary leadership and strategic investments.
Sunil has an extensive healthcare investment and transaction experience across the Asia-Pacific market and has been involved in some of the landmark deals in the healthcare space. In his career spanning 18+ years, Sunil has led and executed deals worth over US$ 7 billion across M&A and Capital Raise.
He serves on the board and committees of various healthcare companies and few prestigious institutions. He is a governing council member of NATHEALTH and a member on CII – National Committee on Biotechnology.
Prior to Quadria Capital, Sunil has worked with Religare Capital Markets and PNB Gilts at various senior positions. He has a Masters Degree in International Business from Delhi School of Economics.
Sunil has an extensive healthcare investment and transaction experience across the Asia-Pacific market and has been involved in some of the landmark deals in the healthcare space. In his career spanning 18+ years, Sunil has led and executed deals worth over US$ 7 billion across M&A and Capital Raise.
He serves on the board and committees of various healthcare companies and few prestigious institutions. He is a governing council member of NATHEALTH and a member on CII – National Committee on Biotechnology.
Prior to Quadria Capital, Sunil has worked with Religare Capital Markets and PNB Gilts at various senior positions. He has a Masters Degree in International Business from Delhi School of Economics.
He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Care24. Vipin Pathak started his career as a software engineer at Financial Technologies and quickly moved up in his career to become a business consultant at PwC and later as manager at Ernst & Young.
But he didn’t stop until he did something entirely on his own, which is also helpful for the community. Thus, his startup Care24 was born. Launched in 2014, Care24 is an end-to-end home care service platform that connects different types of care-givers with patients.Vipin Pathak's drive for pursuing his startup goal in the field of home care stems from his experience with international knowledge houses such as PwC and EY. It was rather an emotional thought that he and many of his professional friends in the metros shared among each other about their old parents living in small towns who often struggle to travel to far-away places to access better healthcare.
Care24 is one of the leading home healthcare companies and envisions to become the biggest platform for all health services at home. Strongly built on technology and heavily invested in quality and training processes, the platform makes home-healthcare reliable, accessible and affordable for one and all. Their services are currently available in Mumbai and NCR region but they aim to expand the services pan india. They offer patient services to multiple acute and chronic conditions cases of Post-Hospitalization, Stroke, Cardiac, Neuro, Ortho, Elderly bedridden, Dementia, Cancer etc. The core services offered are Medical Nursing, Physiotherapy, Attendants, ICU & Step down at Home.
Healthcare is about long term investments and consistent efforts. Their continuous effort in working with customer’s requirements, creating new service lines and empowering supply financially and technologically has helped them to become the trusted brand in Home care. With the addition of new cities, disease specific offerings and more affordable products and services across different verticals, their long term goal is to serve 50,000 patients/day on the platform for all of their healthcare needs.
Speaking about the company’s journey through the pandemic, Vipin Pathak, Founder and CEO, Care24 says that the past two years have been an overwhelming time for all sectors, especially healthcare. Due to the hospitals being flooded with patients, home healthcare space saw accelerated activity. “It has resulted into more customer awareness and acceptance to Home Healthcare”
The startup was recently acquired by Human Life Management (HLM) which is a leading Japanese home medical delivery platform. It doubled down on innovation to cater to customers requirements.HLM claimed to have worked closely with Care24 on several projects in India, the Middle East, and Africa. The Human Life Management is a part of the SIPS group, which runs Home Medical Care in Japan, where it provides critical care to over 6000 families through its partner Yushoukai Medical Corporation.
In terms of funding, Vipin Pathak notes that HLM, a long-term investor in the firm, is prepared to contribute $5-$10 million to assist Care24's growth in the future years.
“We aim to bridge the gaps of Global Medical expertise, best practices, capital and network in Japan, Southeast Asia with HLM and Care24’s existing capabilities. All our investors are also excited and pleased with this acquisition and strongly believe that HLM is the right long term partner for us," Vipin Pathak, Founder and CEO, Care24 said.
Vivek Agarwal is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Square Yards – India’s largest integrated platform for Real Estate. Vivek has been instrumental in building various tech and product platforms for the company. He rich experience spanning 18+ years with some of world’s largest companies like Intel, Nokia and Accenture. Vivek is also an avid researcher and recognized in industry circles as a thought leader having published multiple point-of-views on proptech, global mega trends, value chains, business models, products & service strategy.
Vaibhav, a technophile and problem solver, founded Shadowfax Technologies in 2015 with his batchmates from IIT Delhi.Vaibhav's technical intrusions and initiatives are focused on 3PL integrated services that offer comprehensive, one-stop solutions for enterprise supply chains in packaging, warehousing, transportation, and order fulfilment. He has developed algorithms that help solve complex logistics problems and keep Shadowfax ahead of the curve in a dynamic and fiercely competitive environment.
Vaibhav is a cricket enthusiast and loves to explore new places. In his free time, he also performs stand-up comedy routines at his favorite Bengaluru café.
Vivek Tiwari is the Founder and CEO of Medikabazaar, India’s largest online platform for medical supplies.
He is known as an innovator, entrepreneur, and the doyen of the healthcare ecommerce business. Vivek founded MEDIKABAZAAR as a one-stop solution for medical procurement in cities ranging from Tier 1 to Tier 4, with the goal of revolutionising healthcare and enhancing patient care. It is because of his vision that MEDIKABAZAAR now has a presence in 20,000+ pin codes, serves 2 lac hospitals, and has 7 lac+ SKUs.
Vivek is an alumnus of IIM Calcutta, he has an extensive experience in leadership roles which he was designated at prominent global conglomerates like Nestle S.A., Telenor, Maxis Telecom, and Tata Group.
He is a distinguished member of the consortium of ace professionals in the Global Medical Devices sector. At the same time, he is also an independent board member at a global regulatory and marketing organization for medical devices. Starting the company in 2015, he has been able to achieve significant success in making Medikabazaar as India’s largest B2B HealthTech platform.
Vivek has received many industry accolades, including:
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