Our speakers

Sanjay Nath, Managing Partner, Blume Ventures

Sanjay is a Co-founder & Managing Partner at Blume Ventures ( www.blumeventures.com ), India’s leading homegrown early-stage VC. Founded in 2010 by Karthik Reddy and Sanjay Nath, Blume has invested in over 100 startups since its inception.

Blume’s portfolio includes notable exits such as Taxiforsure (acquired by Olacabs), Zipdial (acq by Twitter), Promptec Renewables (acq by Havells), Minjar (acq by Nutanix), and most recently Mettl (acq by Mercer). Its growing base of emerging portfolio stars include Grey Orange Robotics, Unacademy, Servify, Locus, Railyatri, Nowfloats, Tricog, Belong, Webengage, Carbon Clean Solutions, Stellapps amongst others. Sanjay serves as a board advisor on several Blume portfolio companies including Locus, Tricog, Little Black Book, Dataweave, Yulu Bike and others.

Prior to Blume, Sanjay was also an active angel investor through Mumbai Angels. His angel investments include Inmobi, LittleEye Labs (acquired by Facebook), Tonbo Imaging, Svasti Microfinance, 6Dbytes (Blendid), amongst others.

Sanjay’s experience spans the US and India, and ranges from management consulting (PwC and IBM Global Services), product marketing and operations (Sun Microsystems) and angel investing (thru Mumbai Angels). Most recently, prior to founding Blume, he co founded Loxodrome, a legal outsourcing company with dual-shore operations in San Francisco and Pune, India. Early in his career, Sanjay supported the growth of Kanbay (Nasdaq IPO in ’04), then acquired by Cap Gemini for $1.25BL in ‘06.
Sanjay has earned an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management and also holds an undergraduate major in Information Systems from BITS, Pilani.

Sanjay Nath, Co-founder & Managing Partner, Blume Venture Advisors Pvt. Ltd. | @BlumeVentures

Sanjay is a Co-founder & Managing Partner at Blume Ventures (www.blumeventures.com). Blume has emerged as one of India's leading early-stage funds, having invested in over 50 startups since its inception in late 2010.

Blume's portfolio includes Taxiforsure (acquired by Olacabs), Zipdial (acquired by Twitter), Qubecell (acquired by Boku), Grey Orange Pte Lte, Mettl, Webengage, Hotelogix, Exotel, Rolocule Games, and Carbon Clean Solutions, amongst others. Many of Blume’s portfolio companies have secured follow-on financing from top tier global VCs including Tiger Global, Accel, Matrix, Bessemer, Cisco Ventures, to name a few.

Prior to Blume, Sanjay was also an active angel investor through Mumbai Angels. His angel investments include Inmobi, Appsdaily (formerly Onward Mobility), Little Eye Labs (acquired by Facebook), Tonbo Imaging and Svasti amongst others.

Sanjay’s experience spans the US and India, and ranges from management consulting (PwC and IBM Global Services), product marketing and operations (Sun Microsystems) and angel investing (thru Mumbai Angels). Most recently, prior to founding Blume, he co founded Loxodrome, a legal outsourcing company with dual-shore operations in San Francisco and Pune, India. Early in his career, Sanjay supported the growth of Kanbay (Nasdaq IPO in ’04), then acquired by Cap Gemini for $1.25BL in ‘06.

Sanjay has earned an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management and also holds an undergraduate major in Information Systems from BITS, Pilani.

@sanjaynath

Sanjay Nayak, CEO & MD, Tejas Networks

Sanjay Nayak is the Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of Tejas Networks, a leading optical networking product company from India. Mr. Nayak is a technologist with over 20 years of industry experience in India as well as the USA. Prior to founding Tejas, he held senior management position in globally leading Electronic Design Automation companies such as Synopsys (where he was the Managing Director of Synopsys-India) and earlier at Cadence Design Systems.

Mr. Nayak holds a M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh and B.E in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra.

Sanjay Nekkanti, CEO, Dhruva Space

Sanjay Ojha, Senior Partner, Business Transformation Services, IBM Consulting, India & South Asia

Sanjay is leading IBM’s pivot to AI & Cloud in the new paradigm through his role as leader for Business Transformation Services in India. He drives client mindshare on transformation led by AI, Digital and functional consulting ie, customer, talent, finance and supply chain. He works across industries including Banks, Telcos, Retailers, Media, Industrial and Government sector.

Before IBM, Sanjay was a Managing Director at Accenture in New York office, where he led Applied Intelligence and Digital business for Financial Services in North America. He helped clients reimagine their business models by embracing Artificial Intelligence and Analytics. He joined the firm in 2009 to help launch its Analytics business, grown it to global scale over a decade, that included building a global data science team of 1000+ practitioners across five markets.

In his prior work life between 2000-2009, Sanjay was instrumental in setting up GE Capital’s Analytics Center of Excellence at Bangalore, a first of its kind in India, that serviced businesses worldwide. Subsequently, he joined the leadership team of Genpact that was spun off from GE, and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina to set up Analytics virtual captives  for the US Banks.

Sanjay is an analytics and data native who is well versed with machine learning, data science, data engineering and artificial intelligence technologies, and its application to solve industry problems.

Sanjay Purohit, Founder, Director & CEO, iProf Learning Solutions India Pvt. Ltd

Sanjay is an expert in business innovation and process transformation and has extensive experience of leading transformation projects across several industries and organizations. He has experience in technology, textiles and outsourcing services industries and has worked in USA, India and Singapore.

Prior to starting iProf, Sanjay was a managing director with New York based business restructuring firm LMCO. As part of his role at LMCO, he oversaw restructuring at prominent organizations such as Silicon Graphics and Great wide. He has led several organizations through transformation phases as a CEO. He was the CEO of USD 600M textile firm Dan River in the United States. Dan River's transformation under he has been featured in several business periodicals and is a University of North Carolina Business School case study. In addition to Dan River, Sanjay has also been the CEO of BPO organizations Colwell and Salmon, Cartel; and manufacturing firm Best and Baker.

Earlier in his career, Sanjay has worked with AT&T Wireless and Motorola when they had just entered the Indian market. He was also part of the founding team at outsourcing firm Epicenter Technologies. His first job was as an IAS officer.

Sanjay is an MBA (Gold Medalist) from IIM, Ahmedabad and holds a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT, Mumbai.

Sanjay Sacheti, India Country Manager, Olam Agro India Ltd

Sanjay Sacheti is the Country Head since the year 2003 for Olam's Indian business which comprises of supply chain management of various agri commodities like Cashew, Coffee, Cotton, Rice, Sugar etc. He has been with Olam since the year 2000, and has experience of around 22 years in the areas of Finance, Commercial and agri commodity management.

He is a Chartered Accountant and a Company Secretary, and has prior experience of working with corporates like Hindustan Unilever, AgroTech Foods and the Tata Group. 

Sanjay Sancheti, Country Manager, Olam Agro India

Sanjay Sacheti is the Country Head since the year 2003 for Olam's Indian business which comprises of supply chain management of various agri commodities like Cashew, Coffee, Cotton, Rice, Sugar etc. He has been with Olam since the year 2000, and has experience of around 22 years in the areas of Finance, Commercial and agri commodity management.

He is a Chartered Accountant and a Company Secretary, and has prior experience of working with corporates like Hindustan Unilever, AgroTech Foods and the Tata Group.

Sanjay Sethi, CEO & Co-Founder, ShopClues.com

Sanjay is widely recognized as a marketplace ‘guru’ and a product visionary with expertise in building complex ecosystems for ecommerce. As Co-founder of ShopClues, he is committed to delivering a truly enjoyable shopping experience for customers on this state-of-the-art online platform. Sanjay has enjoyed a successful career of over 20 years in Internet product development, including ecommerce marketplaces, online payments, operations and trade logistics.

Prior to assuming the company's leadership, Sanjay was Vice President - Products and was responsible for providing the products and processes needed to create and run an efficient marketplace at ShopClues.com.

In his previous assignment, Sanjay has been the Global Product Head for Shipping & Logistics, Payments & Billing for eBay, at its headquarter in the Silicon Valley. He is a graduate in technology from Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi) and Indian Institute of Technology - Banaras Hindu University.

Sanjay Sethi, Managing Director & CEO, Signature Agri Ventures Ltd.

Mr. Sanjay Sethi was recognised for his noteworthy contributions to improve the agribusiness and food security situation in African countries and he won the prestigious “The  Africa Food Prize 2013 Award” at Kampala, Uganda. He was also felicitated on behalf of His Highness Sheikh Saud Bin Saqr Al Qasimi, The Ruler of Ras Al Khaimah, UAE. He was also felicitated as per the traditions of Tivland in Nigeria by the then Minister of Commerce and Industry – Governor Samuel Ortom.

Mr. Sanjay Sethi led  Africa and Asia focused teams on agribusiness investment, developing and managing large commercial farms, agri infrastructure and agri business companies. Mr. Sethi undertook many infrastructure projects like setting up India’s first Mega Food Park for Patanjali Ayurved and India’s first Free Trade Warehousing Zone.  Mr. Sethi lives in Dubai and has held senior leadership positions in various reputed international companies in India, Africa and Middle East.  He started his career in 1991 from National Dairy Development Borard, and also worked for Hindistan Unilever, Sputnik Overseas, Premium Farm Fresh Produce, Tachnopak Advisors, Arshiya Internattional, Jain Irrigation, ETG and recently as Managing Director of Signature Agri Ventures Ltd. He is a Graduation in Agriculture and MBA from Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA).

Mr. Sethi’s publications ‘Land of Opportunities - The Food Industry in India’ and  ‘Building Exponential Growth in India’s  Agricultural Exports’  have been widely referred by decision makers in government and private sector world over. Mr. Sethi has a distinguished track record as a Strategist, Entrepreneur,  Business Leader,  Change Agent and a  Thought Leader.  He was invited to speak at business forums all over the world on the topics of food security,  investment opportunities in Agriculture and building  Africa’s  Agribusiness. He has been a Founding Representative from his company to G8‘s “New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition” and  World Economic Forum’s “Grow Africa” initiative which transformed the investment climate in African Agriculture.