Amit has broad experience in education in market opportunity and sizing, growth forecasting, investment prioritization, identification of best demonstrated practices, cost savings identification, pricing strategy, organizational structure and design and business plan development in K-12, Higher Education and Vocational Training segments.

Amit has worked across South-East Asia, Middle-East, China, India and the US and has led over 15 education sector due diligences for Parthenon in Asia, including all of Parthenon's due diligences in the Middle-East.

Amit has a bachelor's degree in engineering from Mumbai University and is a MBA from IIM-Bangalore.

Amit Gupta is Founder Director of S. Chand Harcourt (India) Pvt Ltd., S. Chand Edutech and Business Edge partnership with IFC, he has been instrumental in the group’s transformation to a ‘Knowledge Corporation’. A Mechanical Engineer by qualification with specialization in Operations. Amit brings 30 years of experience as a Business Head, Operations Head in joint ventures and transnational groups such as Tata, Birla’ and other leading companies. As an education industry thought leader, he chairs the Education Committee of PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He is a member of working group by MHRD on PPP for the 12th national plan under the planning commission and holds appointments in various education and business chambers and institutions. He has worked closely with international organizations such as IFC, USAID and GTZ etc. in the training industry. His solutions as Best Microsoft Partner in Egypt, Middle East, Africa and Eatern Europe have been showcased in first world IT summit in Geneva.

Amit Kapur is a promoter of an institute called IIMT.
In this role as a promoter, Amit is helping drive the business development and marketing related activity at the institute, formulating and implementing growth plans including a new campus near Gurgaon and ensuring broad compliances.

Before moving back to India in 2006, he complemented his electronics engineering background with a business focused work experience in US. Broadly speaking, his experience includes working as a chip design engineer at Intel, California, a business development executive at a mid-cap semiconductor company in the bay area and as a Technical Assistant to the CEO in a company called SMSC in New York. In this last role in US, Amit lead broad based business issues to completion.

Amit holds a Bachelors and Masters degree in Electronics Engineering from US an MBA from The Wharton School, Philadelphia

Ankur leads overall sector strategy for our investments and has direct responsibility for the Education portfolio. Prior to this, Ankur has played multiple roles at Acumen, including Interim India Director and global Business Development Manager. Before he joined Acumen, Ankur worked for several years with leading private investors focused on financial access, energy and clean water for low-income markets in India. He also helped set up WaterHealth India, which now serves ~600 villages with drinking water; and managed a project for Robin Hood Foundation to build libraries in 25+ New York City public schools, now serving ~20,000 students. Ankur started his career with McKinsey & Company advising Fortune 100 companies in the US and Europe on M&A and growth opportunities.

Ankur has an Architecture degree from Cornell University, and a Masters in International Development from Harvard's Kennedy School, where he was a Reynolds and a Soros Fellow. Ankur is also an Advisory Board member for the Centre for Civil Society, an independent non-profit research and education organization in Delhi. 

Anand Sudarshan is an education sector advisor. In addition to his role as Advisor, TVS Capital Funds, he is the Founder & Director of Sylvant Advisors Private Limited. Sylvant focuses on providing a range of advisory services to institutions, enterprises & investors, with a strong focus on the education sector.  Anand is also an independent director at Manipal Global Education Services Private Limited (MaGE). Till June 2012, he was Vice-Chairman & Managing Director of MaGE, with whom he has had a distinguished career since May 2006.

Anand also actively supports Government of India in policy formulation, and is a member of select Committees & Task Forces of the Planning Commission of India as well as the Ministry of Human Resource Development (India's Education ministry). He is a founding member of EDGE (an education sector forum and think-tank) and the Vice-Chairman of EDGE's Vision Group. He is also a member of CII's (Confederation of Indian Industry) and FICCI's (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry) national committees on Education.

Prior to his stint at MaGE, Anand was President, Adea International (a wholly owned subsidiary of Adea Solutions, Inc, Dallas TX), responsible for all global businesses of the IT Services & Solutions company. Anand was also the one of the co-founders of the Microland Group and also served in several senior capacities in The Computer Point.
Anand has a Bachelor of Engineering degree (B.S Degree) in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India, and a PGDM (M.B.A Degree) from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, India. 

Arunkumar Pillai is the Chief Operating Officer, IL&FS Skills Development Corporation (IL&FS Skills). IL&FS Skills is promoted by Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. (IL&FS), and National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC). Arunkumar has been with the IL&FS Group since 2009 working on school education and skills training projects. He has played a key role in establishing the joint venture with NSDC. He leads the effort in establishment of the network of IL&FS Institute of Skills (IIS) across the country with an objective to train a million youth annually. IL&FS Skills has 37 IIS across the country today and has trained close to 3 lakh persons.

Before joining IL&FS, Arunkumar has worked in a number of education projects including the establishment and operation of medical colleges, engineering colleges and schools. He has been working in the field of education for the last 10 years. Prior to his foray into education, he worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers in their strategy consulting practice in Mumbai.

He brings to the Group his expertise in strategy formulation and execution and domain knowledge and experience of education sector

Arunkumar holds a MBA from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore and is an electrical engineer from Government College of Engineering, Pune.

Ashish Dhawan is the Founder and CEO of Central Square Foundation (CSF). He worked for twenty years in the investment management business and ran one of India's leading private equity funds, ChrysCapital. In June 2012, he left his full time role at ChrysCapital to start CSF. Ashish is an MBA with distinction from Harvard University and a dual bachelor's (BS/BA) holder with Magna Cum Laude honours from Yale University. He is on the India Advisory Board of Harvard and a member of Yale's Development Council.

Ashish serves on the board of several non-profits including Akanksha Foundation, 3.2.1 Education Foundation, Teach For India, Centre for Civil Society, Janaagraha and GiveLife. As Founder and CEO of CSF, Ashish hopes to bring a fresh impact-based approach to philanthropy in India. He was recently recognized as the NextGen Leader in Philanthropy by Forbes India.

Benjamin Grubbs is the Head of Education & News Content Partnerships for YouTube in Asia Pacific as of October 2013. In this role, Benjamin oversees the strategy and development of content partners targeting YouTube's 1 billion global users with compelling education & news video. Benjamin joined YouTube in Aug 2012 as the Head of Partner Marketing in Asia Pacific, and developed a series of programs and campaigns aimed at elevating YouTube partners in the region.

Prior to YouTube, Benjamin was the Executive Director of Interactive Media for Turner Broadcasting in Asia Pacific. Benjamin drove the strategy and development of Turner's digital entertainment business, including product development, revenue management, digital marketing, and operations from 2008-2012.

Prior to Turner, Benjamin spent nearly 8 years at Yahoo! and eBay in Asia, overseeing Yahoo!'s Broadcast & Enterprise Solutions businesses in Southeast Asia, and marketing at eBay in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong.

Outside of YouTube, Benjamin is a member of the Board of Directors for the Mobile Marketing Association in Asia Pacific.

Benjamin is originally from California, where he spent his teenage years writing local feature stories for the Alameda Newspaper Group, and writing & editing live sports on KICU-TV. He graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in marketing.

Dilip was till recently, Managing Director & CEO of the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC). The NSDC is a Public Private Partnership whose objective is to skill 150 million people in India by 2022 by fostering private sector investment and initiatives in training and skill development in 20 high growth sectors and the unorganized segment.

During his over five years at NSDC, the NSDC approved the funding of over 250 organisations and 38 Sector Councils. The NSDC partners trained over 5 million persons and placed over 62% of them. The 38 Sector councils created over 1500 competency standards and collaborated with over 2000 schools in 13 states as well as 31 universities to introduce industry led assessment and certification in the institutions.

He is Chairman of the Board of Management of the Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology and  also on the Governing Council of a Management School. Prior to NSDC, Dilip was Director General of the advocacy group for the automobile industry in India, Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM).  He also represented SIAM on various Government Committees as well as on the board of the National Skill Development Corporation and the Steering Committee of the International Motorcycle Manufacturers Association.

Before joining SIAM, Dilip was Deputy Director General responsible for Industry Sectors and Associations Council (ASCON) covering, Agriculture, Life sciences and ICT in the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). Dilip was the CII spokesperson and coordinated CII’s international work relating to the ASEAN.

Prior to his last assignment in CII, Dilip was part of an India team working on the competitiveness of Indian industry with Professor Michael Porter, Harvard Business School. He worked in industry prior to joining CII.

@DilipChenoy

Imran is a General Partner at Gaja Capital (www.gajacapital.com). Gaja is India’s leading mid-market growth capital firm. Gaja’s aim is to help create India’s next generation of market leaders in sectors such as Education, Consumer, Financial Services and Healthcare.

Imran has 19 years of experience in Private Equity, Pharmaceuticals and Technology services. Prior to Gaja, Imran worked in a variety of roles of increasing responsibility at Dr. Reddy’s and Wipro Technologies.

At Gaja, Imran leads investments in the Education and Consumer clusters. He has been closely involved with Gaja’s investments in Kangaroo Kids (Pre-K and K-12), SportzVillage (Sports management), EuroKids (Pre-K and K12), John Distilleries (AlcoBev), CL Educate (Supplemental Education), Indus World Schools (K12), Educomp (Education- diversified) and Millennium Schools (K12). Imran has post graduate degrees in software engineering from BITS-Pilani and an MBA from IIM-Bangalore.

Katelyn Donnelly is an Executive Director at Pearson where she leads the Affordable Learning Fund, a venture fund that invests in early-stage companies serving low-cost schools and services to schools and learners in the developing world and seeks market-competitive returns. Katelyn is also an active advisor on Pearson's global strategy, efficacy, research and innovation agenda, as well as a consultant to governments on education system transformation and delivery. She serves as a non-executive director and strategic advisor for several start-up companies across Europe, Asia and Africa. Previously, Katelyn was a consultant at McKinsey and Company in San Francisco and New York and graduated from Duke University with high distinction in economics.

Mr. Mayank Kumar is a Senior Principal in The Parthenon Group's Mumbai office. Mr. Kumar has advised clients in the education sector on market potential, growth and market entry strategies, investment decisions and revenue and profit uplift strategies across geographies including extensive work in India, China, and Southeast Asia. Mr. Kumar has served clients across education sectors with a focus on early years, K-12, and education technology implementation. Mr. Kumar has also worked with various private equity firms on conducting due-diligences in the areas of education, healthcare and commerce. His consulting experience also includes assignments in strategy formulation, operational excellence, policy development and investment decisions for clients across industries including healthcare, telecom, automotive and consumer goods. Prior to Parthenon, Mr. Kumar worked at the Tata Strategic Group. He has a Bachelor's degree from IIT-Delhi and an MBA from Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

Mohit Ralhan, Managing Partner of Indus Balaji Private Equity, a diversified fund with interests in growth capital investment across consumption driven sectors in SME/mid-market space. He is on the Board of companies spanning technology, education, real estate services & media. With over USD 75 Mn investment in companies through his career, Mohit specializes in turnaround situations and dividend plays. Prior to this, Mohit was a part of Barings Private Equity India, where he executed deals in Financial Services, discretionary consumption and agri-commodities space. He has been in the initial team of a Greenfield private sector bank and has also advised one of the largest telecom operators in the country. Mohit holds an MBA in Finance from the Faculty of Management Studies, and is an engineer from NSIT.

Manas is a qualified member of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, Bachelors of Law, MBA (Entrepreneurship) from Babson College (USA). He has earlier worked with Ernst & Young as Global Tax Advisor.
 
It is in this inexhaustible treasure of knowledge in varied discipline that has helped Manas, as he is popularly known in the academic circles, into shaping Greenwood High Schools (with a family of 3800 members i.e. 3300 students and 500 staff ) into what they are today - a harmonious blend of technological and traditional values in education.

His leadership qualities are evident in the way he manages the team and allow them to be creative at all levels in Greenwood High. Under his leadership the school has won more than 7 national Awards in excellence in last 2 years.

He believes that Education is a dedicated service, hence focus and involvement is extremely necessary and crucial. Branching out of school can only happen when you have a sound example to be proud of. It is not about focusing on numbers and cities but to have few schools with best of infrastructure and self focus to make sure quality of education is imparted.

His aim is to create high quality institutions, and all our schools will have around 15 acre campuses and will be equipped with state of the art infrastructure, facilities and something unique in them.
 
Presently, we are building 3 new Greenwood High campuses two in Bangalore- one on Bannerghatta Road which is spread across 15 acres and the second one on Sarjapur Road - a complete International Branch on a 14 Acre Campus and one in Kolkata in New Town (Rajarhat), spread on a15 Acres.

Prabhat Jain is the Director of Pathways School. He was born to a Delhi-based traditional Jain family, and joined his family-run stone business where he was instrumental in expanding the business.

In 1999, he decided to make the foray into the education space. With a focused vision to create an institution second to none, Mr. Prabhat and his brothers did an extensive research on school education. This enticing journey of 'unlearning and learning' spanned over 2 years and the model of a world class international school evolved in 2003 named the Pathways World School.

Mr. Prabhat is member of various bodies and councils in the field of education. He was instrumental in raising private equity for the company in 2009-10 for further expansion. He aspires to continue his research and gradually expand the school chain in different parts of India.

Praveen Chakravarty is the ex-CEO of an investment bank, a 2012 Eisenhower Fellow, founding trustee of India's first data journalism initiative IndiaSpend and board member of Centre for Civil Society, India's highest ranked thinktank globally. He is a regular oped contributor on politics and policy for the Business Standard and Mint.

Raj Grover is a proficient CEO turned entrepreneur with extensive experience across global organizations viz. Nestle, Wrigley’s, HMV and Rupert Murdoch Group. In his illustrious career, he has led multifold growth across India and International markets, built global brands, incubated business, spearheaded financial turnarounds, technology and product innovation.

Early 2000, Raj realized the growing aspirations of young parents and in alliance with a leading brand co-modeled the concept of affordable-up-market, ‘Boutique International Schools’. Few years later, Raj took another leap of faith, this time in the Low Cost Affordable Schools, demonstrating a whole new opportunity to build high quality, low cost, sustainable schools.

Both these initiatives, applauded as game changers have created a whole new category and being recognized as the most sought after, scalable models inspiring many entrepreneurs and established brands in the education sector.

Raj is of the firm belief that, solution to all global issues; economic and social, present and future depends on a responsible and effective schooling system. He is committed to creating a scalable and sustainable model around this. The one, that ‘Breaks the Mold’ and ‘Re-Invent’s’ to prepare students deal with the uncertain challenges, complexities and opportunities of the 2050 era.

Rajeev has a master's degree in Business Administration from IIM Bangalore and M.Tech from BITS Pilani. Prior to eDreams, Rajeev was GM - Software Products Group at Wipro (100 MUSD Business at Wipro). He has won many awards at Wipro in business innovation, business development, account and project management. Rajeev has 19 years of work experience to his credit.

Dr Rob Forage is the CEO of UNSW Global, a wholly-owned enterprise of UNSW Australia (The University of New South Wales). UNSW Global specialises in educational assessments and international education pathway programs and includes the prestigious UNSW Foundation Studies, UNSW Institute of Languages and Educational Assessment Australia.

Rob earned a B.Sc as a botanist and biochemist at the University of Tasmania, then a D.Phil as a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford followed by a post-Doctoral Fellowship at Harvard Medical School. He worked in the management of industrial R&D programs in the early days of the Australian biotechnology industry.

From there he pursued a career in the commercialisation of technology, introducing a range of important research products into international markets, through private consultancy and operational roles. He has worked in research management, business incubation and private equity investment prior to his current role in private education.

Rob has over 60 scientific/business publications, grants and patents. He is a Director of UNSW Press and is also a Councillor of the Fairbridge Foundation, a charitable organisation focused on assisting under-privileged children in NSW.

Rohit Kumar joined as MD - South Asia, Health Science Division, Reed Elsevier India Pvt. Ltd. in July 2009. He is the President of Association of Publishers in India.

Armed with his degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Rohit started his career with Accenture and worked on IT projects in India and Turkey. After 3 years, he decided to pursue his MBA with Wharton & thereafter, he continued his consulting career with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Chicago. The prospects of working on new technologies prompted Rohit to join Oracle in the Silicon Valley where he worked on strategy, product development and product marketing.
 
Following a 9 year stint in the US, Wipro presented Rohit with the opportunity to relocate back to India. Apart from growing this sales vertical organically, notably from winning big deals such as Shell, Rohit was also instrumental in leading Wipro's first overseas acquisition of American Management System's (AMS) Global Energy Practice, as well as the integration of this newly acquired division into Wipro. This milestone achievement has paved the way for future acquisitions for Wipro.

With this successful track record, Rohit joined Microsoft India as country head of the Public Sector vertical where his key area of focus was on building the business through deepening key relationships with various government bodies, including the healthcare department.

Prior to joining Elsevier, Rohit was the President of Higher Education with Educomp Solutions where he was responsible for starting up a new business in the 'brick and mortar higher education space'. In addition to this, he was a Board Member for three startups in the field of online education, online lead generation as well as online supplemental education

He is the Secretary of Association of Publishers of India (API) and member of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) Publishing Committee. He is also the founder and President of the Wharton Club of Delhi.

Sandeep's passion for investing in innovative companies drove him to establish Kaizen Private Equity in 2009. As the Founder of the fund, he has been instrumental in building the firm's knowledge and client network across U.S, Europe and Asia. He believes in forming trusted partnerships with companies and their management teams on a shared commitment to achieve excellence and growth.  Sandeep’s passion is to work closely with entrepreneurs who have a deep sense of purpose and a solid plan for identifying and “owning” emerging white spaces and leveraging initial “ownership” to build highly valuable differentiated companies.

One of his professional commitments is to promote and improve the overall human capital development environment, by investing in companies that have a progressive impact on the economic growth of societies. Sandeep has been a part of the venture capital and private equity industry since 2002 and has been credited with numerous successful transactions in the US and in India. Some of his prior investments include Reconnex, (sold to McAfee) Bridgestream (sold to Oracle), Clairmail (sold to Monitise), LassoLogic (sold to Sonicwall), and Xactly Software. He sits on the boards of various education companies and is a frequent speaker on emerging education trends globally.

He has a MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.

Career Launcher was founded by Satya, and he has led its dramatic growth from a one-man startup to one of Asia's most global education corporates. Satya is a renowned speaker in Indian academic circles, has personally trained thousands of students, teachers and corporate executives, and is the moving force behind several pioneering initiatives in the Asian education markets.

Tonmoy Shingal is the Co-founder and COO of Mettl, an online assessments platform. Tonmoy, who is an electrical engineer from IIT Kanpur and  a MBA from IIM Bangalore brings experience from technology giants like Texas instruments and consulting companies like The Boston Consulting Group. He holds  three patents in the area of security algorithm design. Tutrr, an online Math practice assistant for school students is the brainchild of Tonmoy.

“Nothing is more creative... or destructive... than a brilliant mind with a purpose”.  Mr. Rajasekhar Babu Yarlagadda is that brilliant visionary, whose path of progress is self-architected.

Mr. Rajasekar Babu is a true business personality with dynamism. He is one of the key visionaries behind various successful educational ventures like Oakridge, Vikas and Oi Play Schools and the key inceptor of People Combine Group.

Being the Managing Director of the company, Mr Babu has worked hard to provide the People Combine Group altogether a new identity in the business world. He has an insatiable desire to strive for excellence with a steadfastness to achieve.  

Holding a graduate degree in civil engineering and a Post Graduate in management from ISB ( Indian School of Business, Hyderabad ) , Mr. Babu manages the Business Expansion, Fund Raising, Finance and Budgeting, Brand Management, Mergers and Acquisitions of the company.

He is highly creative, design focused and an excellent organiser.

Relation building is his forte and he is an opt solution finder. He has raised the turnover of the company manifold with a relentless quest for accomplishment.

Mr. Rajasekhar has also been recognised for his exemplary contribution towards the organisation. Not only that, he has also been awarded with Business Wizard of Andhra Pradesh by a leading News magazine- India Today Group.

On the life front, Mr. Rajasekhar is considered the most amiable and energetic soul to be with by his family and friends. He is also an avid book lover and loves to explore new places of the world.