A “Thumbs-Up” from Sukanya

Sukanya, 7-year-old girl, attending a local government school suffered with bilateral cataracts since birth and only had 1/5th of the normal vision.Her parents did not even know of her condition until she was in 1st grade and her teachers kept scolding her for her lack of attention and poor grades. Her parents took her to a local doctor and heard that the cost of her surgery was more than they could afford.Then Nanna Kannu, a comprehensive Pediatric Eye Care Program from Sankara, came to her school and she was identified as needing surgery. She was referred to the base hospital for an evaluation and within a week, Sukanya had her right eye operated on. She admits being very scared but is anxious to have her left eye “fixed” as well. When asked what she thought of having surgery, Sukanya gave us a “thumbs up”.

Rakesh Jhunjhunwalais

Rakesh Jhunjhunwalais called the King of Indian Stock Market. He is an Indian businessman and investor with a Midas touch. He manages his own portfolio as a partner in his asset management firm, Rare Enterprises. Everyone in India know Mr. Rakesh Jhunjhunwala as a Warren Buffett of India.

S.V.Balasubramaniyam

Dr. SV Balasubramaniam, SVB as he is known, has been a mentor, friend, guide and visionary at Sankara Eye Foundation, India and continues to steer it towards realizing its vision. SVB joined the Board of Trustees in 1984 and has been a pivotal force of support for the movement to eradicate curable blindness in India.

A qualified chartered accountant, SVB heads a diverse group of industrial establishments, the Bannari Amman Group; one of the largest Industrial conglomerates in South India with wide spectrum of manufacturing, trading and service activities. Manufacturing and trading include sugar, alcohol, liquor, granite etc. The service sector has wind power energy, education etc. SVB is also Managing Trustee of various other social bodies, including Siruthuli, a citizens’ movement to promote and preserve ecological conservation.

Chandar Pattabhiram

Chandar Pattabhiram is currently CMO of Coupa, responsible for all aspects of marketing including strategic marketing, growth marketing, brand and corporate marketing. During his tenure, the company has grown approximately twentyfold with a $20B+ valuation and cemented its position as the #1 Business Spend Management platform.

Prior to joining Coupa, Pattabhiram was the CMO at Marketo where he was responsible for all aspects of marketing and in charge of positioning Marketo as the digital marketing industry’s innovation leader.Previously, Pattabhiram was head of worldwide marketing for Badgeville, and prior to that, Pattabhiram was vice president at IBM Cast Iron Systems where he was responsible for all product marketing and channel marketing efforts. In 2010, IBM acquired Cast Iron as a centerpiece of its Cloud strategy.

Pattabhiram also spent years at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) as a strategic advisor to Fortune 500 companies in the high-tech, retail, and oil and gas industries. He has been named by LinkedIn as one of the top 5 CMOs in the world to follow for thought-leadership in the digital marketing domain and also as one of the top influential CMOs in 2019.

He is a Board Advisor to Gainsight and Freshworks and is on the Board of Directors for BlueShift ,an AI based platform for consumer engagement.

Ram Reddy

Ram Reddy is a serial entrepreneur and venture partner. Founded four successful companies. Founder and Chairman @ Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (GIA) a 33-year reputed market research firm. Ram is the Board Chair, Co-founder and key investor in clinical stage medical devices company.

Venture Capitalist & Investor: Venture Partner @ 9 venture capital firms. 6 focused on the US startup ecosystem and 3 cross border covering Asia. Angel Investor @ 30+ early-to-mid stage startups based in the Silicon Valley with multiple exits.

Mentor & Eco-connector: Enjoys mentoring and connecting promising Valley startups (validated POC) to venture funds or big enterprise.

Charitable Giving: Passionately associated with high impact charities for 20+ years as advisor, mentor, donor, and sometimes as board member.

Shreeja Sharma

Shreeja Sharma hosts the morning drive on Bolly 92.3 FM, the San Francisco Bay Area’s Bollywood station! Previously, she has been on the radio in Dubai and India, having started her broadcasting career with All India Radio, Delhi.

MarkAgnews

Mark Agnew is the CEO and founder of Eyeglasses.com, a leader in the online consumer eyewear business. Since 1999, Agnew pioneered online retailing by being the first eyewear company with a virtual try-on application, earning two patents which were later sold to Luxottica Corporation.

Founded on the principal of helping others, Eyeglasses.com continues to evolve its charity program and in 2019 launched PiWear to literally make blind people see again. For every pair of PiWear sold, Eyeglasses.com funds a cataract surgery in India. This effort has earned Agnew wide-ranging media coverage in the press.

MritunjayTiwari

Mr. Tiwary started Akhand Jyoti Eye Hospital (AJEH) with a strong belief that innovatively delivered eye-health can alleviate poverty, improve gender parity and enhance social capital in the low-income states of India. He also works actively to provide equal opportunities to girls from rural Bihar by running a unique ‘Football To Eyeball’ talent creation initiative at the eye hospital which aims to tackle child marriage and gender inequality by providing an alternative to girls.

The “Football to Eyeball” program was started in 2010 to develop a local talent pool of ophthalmic personnel. Under this program, girls from the local villages are encouraged to play football (soccer) and train to qualify as professional optometrists thereby empowering them to cure blindness and make a broader societal impact in a very patriarchal society.

Sarvajna

Born in the family of a legendary Sanskrit scholar, Sarvajna is a pharmaceutical scientist trained at IIT, Kashi Hindu Vishvavidyalaya in Varanasi, and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. After developing several medicines for Glaxo and other companies for 15 years, Sarvajna launched Pearl Therapeutics in 2007 in Silicon Valley to develop several much needed, yet not available, drug combinations for patients with chronically obstructed airways. AstraZeneca acquired Pearl in 2013 for $1.15B, and funded it with another $1.5B to develop and launch products worldwide. In parallel, Sarvajna has co-founded and built AngioSafe, a novel cardiovascular catheter company, to solve the complex challenge of restoring blood flow in totally occluded arteries in hearts and legs of millions of patients.

Sarvajna has won several scientific and entrepreneurial accolades, but his biggest award is the collective blessing of an estimated over 150 million patients who have been helped by his products over the past 28 years. The commercial value of this human impact is estimated to be over $100B in revenues over this time period.

Sarvajna is a Charter Member of TiE Silicon Valley, an advisor and mentor to entrepreneurs, and supporter of charities which educate and feed underprivileged students in India.

Amit Walia

Amit Walia is the chief executive officer of Informatica, a global leader in enterprise cloud data management. He was appointed the CEO in 2020 after leading product development, market strategy, product management and strategic ecosystems for seven years as the President and also the Chief Product Officer of the company.

Amit has led Informatica’s product organization, delivering the industry’s best AI- powered enterprise cloud data management platform which has been a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader in all FIVE key areas of data management for several years in a row. Amit has been the driving force behind Informatica’s Intelligent Cloud Services platform which won the 2020 Best Cloud Data Management Solution award by Computing Magazine. Customer-centricity, Innovation and Culture are three key leadership tenets that Amit has inculcated in the corporate DNA of Informatica. He believes in servant- leadership and paying it forward as essential principles to live and lead by.

Prior to Informatica, Amit worked in leadership positions across a variety of functions at Symantec, Intuit, and McKinsey & Company. He spent the earlier part of his career working for Tata Group and Infosys Technologies in India.

Amit holds a Master of Business Administration with honors in strategy and economics from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Additionally, he received his Bachelor of Science with honors degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Varanasi. Follow him on Twitter @amit_walia

Dr. Kailash Joshi

Dr. Kailash Joshi is a Silicon Valley technology influencer, statesman and multi generational mentor and community development leader.

After receiving a PhD from Cornell University, he began an illustrious 25-year career at IBM which included many first generation technology initiatives such as high volume automation for printer manufacturing, the introduction of IBM’s first laser printer, and leading IBM’s re-entry into India — now its largest MNC employer.

Among his many greater good undertakings that evolved over time into massive community influences are – Co-Founder and past President of TiE; Co-Founder and Founding President of American India Foundation (AIF); Founding of India’s first IP Institution (GIIP); Promotion and ideation of India’s 108 first and now largest Emergency Management System (EMRI); Envisioning India’s Digital Equalizer (DE) program at the AIF which supports multiple charitable causes and raises funds for India’s social uplifting; and multiple other community service initiatives spanning 4 decades.

Today, he continues his lifelong legacy and commitment to making a difference by giving back. He recently founded Hindu Community Institute (HCI), yet another social impact non-profit focused on well-being and quality of contemporary life.

BVJagadeesh

BV Jagadeesh is Managing Partner at KAAJ Ventures. He has successfully invested and guided companies such as Nutanix (IPO), Yodlee (IPO), Arkin (acqd: VMWare), Elastic Box (acqd: Century Link), NetMagic Solutions (acqd: NTT), Ocarina Networks (acqd: Dell) and Ankeena (acqd: Juniper) to name a few.

Before founding KAAJ, BV Jagadeesh served as a founding investor and CEO of NetScaler.NetScaler pioneered the concept of Application Delivery and was successfully sold to Citrix for $325M and served as Group VP and GM for Citrix’s Application Networking division.Prior to Netscaler, he co-founded and served as CTO of Exodus communications in 1993 that pioneered the concept of Internet data centers. He was instrumental in the successful IPO of Exodus in 1998.

Currently Jagadeesh is an active investor and serves on the board of several SiliconValley StartUPs. He is also an adjunct faculty at the Leavey School of Business, SCU.

Jagadeesh is also very actively involved with several non profits for the betterment of the world such as UVCE Foundation – providing scholarships to deserving students, One School At A Time – Constructs School buildings for the under privileged, Akshaya Patra – providing mid day meals to 1.6 Million children everyday.

Mallika Chopra

Mallika Chopra is a mom, media entrepreneur, public speaker and published author. She is the author of Just Breathe: Meditation, Mindfulness, Movement andMore and Just Feel: How to be Stronger, Healthier, Happier and More – accessible, fun, how-to books filled with full-color illustrations written for 8-12 year olds.

In Living With Intent: My Somewhat Messy Journey to Purpose, Peace and Joy,Mallika shares insights she gained while seeking meaning and balance as a mom and entrepreneur who felt she was overwhelmed by work, family and toomany responsibilities.

Mallika has taught meditation to thousands of people, and enjoys speaking to audiences around the world about intention, balance and living a life of purpose.

Aruna Ravichandran

Aruna Ravichandran is Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Cisco’s Webex Collaboration, responsible for promoting Cisco’s $6B Collaboration Technology business. A passionate advocate for customers with 20+ years of technology industry experience, Aruna leads product marketing, brand management, digital marketing, demand generation, events, and solutions marketing.

Prior to Cisco, Aruna was Vice President of Marketing for DevOps at CA Technologies (acquired by Broadcom). Earlier experience includes Vice President, Marketing and Strategy for the Software Solutions Division at Juniper Networks, and escalating leadership roles in both marketing and engineering at Hewlett-Packard.

Aruna serves on the Advisory Board for Graphics Communications at California Polytechnic State University. Previously she was on the Advisory Board for Panzura, a leading provider of cloud file sharing solutions. She has published two books on DevOps and is a contributing blogger for the Forbes Technology Council.

Aruna holds an MBA and a Master of Science in Computer Engineering from Santa Clara University, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Bangalore University. She completed the Northwestern University’s Kellogg Executive CMO program in 2019.

AnandKripalu

As Managing Director & CEO, Anand Kripalu is leading USL’s transformation journey. He serves as the Chairman of Royal Challengers Bangalore and is on the Board of IIM, Jammu. Throughout Anand’s career he held leadership positions at companies including Mondelez International, Cadbury India and Hindustan Unilever. In addition he is the former Chairman of Confederation of Indian Alcoholic Beverage Companies as well as former Chair of the CII National FMCG Committee.

Anand has a Bachelor’s Degree in Electronics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, from where he has received the Distinguished Alumnus Award. He has completed the Advanced Management Program from Wharton Business School.

Sandy Carter

Sandy Carter is AWS, Vice President of WWPS Partners, Startups and Programs, driving growth in the public sector Internationally, as well as in the USA. She previously built an enterprise workload team as the Vice President of Enterprise Workloads at AWS focused on migration and modernization through containers and serverless.

She is the author of Extreme Innovation: Three Superpowers for Purpose and Profit. Sandy was named The Awards Magazine’s 2020 Women in Tech: Top 50 Influencers and 2020 Top 15 Cloud Computing Influencers, Onalytica’s 2020 Top 10 Tech & Innovation, Lifetime Achievement Winner, ‘Excellence in Cloud Achievement’ for 2019, AI Innovator of the Year Nominee in 2019, Top 39 Engineers by Business Insider 2018, and 2017 CNN’s Top 10 Women in Tech.

Sandy is the Chairman of the Board of Girls in Tech, and an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University Silicon Valley.

Mr. Chandra

Mr. Chandra joined Bain Capital Private Equity in 2008 as a member of it’s Asia-Pacific leadership team. He is the founder and Chairman of its India office.

Prior to joining Bain Capital, Mr. Chandra spent most of his professional career at DSP Merrill Lynch, a leading investment bank in India. He retired from DSP Merrill Lynch in 2007 as a Board Member & it’s Managing Director. Prior to his MBA, Mr. Chandra worked at India’s leading engineering & construction firm, Larsen & Toubro.

Over the years Mr. Chandra has served on the Boards of many leading corporates and not for profits including Tata Sons, Genpact, Ashoka University, Piramal Enterprises, Emcure Pharmaceuticals, Akanksha Foundation, Tata Investments, and Give India.

His wife Archana and he received the “Asia Heroes of Philanthropy Award” in 2016. Mr. Chandra received his MBA from Boston College, and was awarded the school’s Distinguished Alumni in 2007, a year in which he was also named by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader. He received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from VJTI, Bombay University.

Deval Sanghavi

Starting out working with street children in Mumbai in 1996, Deval’s passion and commitment to serve marginalized communities led to the creation of Dasra over 2 decades ago.

Dasra has actively shaped the development sector enabling NGOs to scale nationwide, advising philanthropists and foundations on their giving strategies and supporting collaborative action in urban sanitation, adolescents and more recently migrant workers.

He is currently co-leading an effort to create a stronger social compact between industry and workers to ensure greater dignity and equity.

Deval holds a Bachelor of Business Administration with a dual Honors degree in Business and Finance from the University of Texas, Austin, is a Cordes Fellow, and a founding board member of Magic Bus and Villgro. In 2014, he was awarded the Forbes Philanthropy Award in the ‘Crossover Leaders’ category for successfully transitioning from investment banking to the non-profit sector.

Madhuri Kanitkar

In February 2020, Major General Madhuri Kanitkar was promoted to the rank of a Lieutenant General. This historic promotion makes her the third woman officer and the first pediatrician to rise to the second-highest rank in the Indian Armed Forces.

Lt. Gen. Kanitkar is the Deputy Chief of Integrated Defense Staff (Medical) and also serves on the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC). She is the first trained pediatric nephrologist of the armed forces, and was instrumental in setting up units to monitor kidney ailments in children in Pune and Delhi.

She graduated from the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune and placed first in all three phases of her MBBS. Was awarded the President’s Gold Medal for the best outgoing student of the graduate wing in academics and extra-curricular activities, plus won the Kalinga Trophy for excellence in academics. Lt. Gen. Kanitkar held several professorship posts at various Armed Forces Medical colleges and served as the Deputy Director of the General Armed Forces Medical Services in Delhi.

Donning the Olive Green uniform and standing tall in a male dominated profession, Lt. Gen. Kanitkar is a true inspiration to every little girl who dreams of joining the armed forces.

Mr. Amitabh Kant

Mr. Amitabh Kant is recognized as India’s renowned change leader of our time. He is best known for his transformative Ideas and a long-standing reputation as having written India’s playbook on economic growth, governance, policy, rural development, infrastructure, and entrepreneurship.

He currently serves as the CEO of NITI Aayog, (National Institution for Transforming India), a policy thinktank of the Government of India. Under his able leadership, NITI Aayog has made many foundational breakthroughs in sustainability, cooperative engagements with India’s State Governments on economic policy using a compelling bottom-up approach.

Mr. Kant is the key driver and mastermind behind some of the most successful national campaigns over the past few decades. Some prominent programs under his leadership are “Make in India,” “Startup India”, “Incredible India,” and “God’s Own Country”.

Under Mr. Kant’s able leadership, NITI Aayog continues to deliver many major strategic initiatives including AMRUT, Digital India, Atal Innovation Mission, Medical Education Reform, Agriculture Reforms, Indices Measuring States’ Performance in Health, Education and Water Management, Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on Rationalization of Centrally Sponsored Schemes, Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on Skill Development, Task Forces on Agriculture and up of Poverty, and Transforming India Educational programs.

Amongst his many accolades, Mr. Amitabh Kant received the Economic Times Policy Change Agent of the Year Award, the Bloomberg TV Personality of the year Award, the NDTV Administrator of the year Award and the Distinguished Fellowship of the Institute of Directors. He is the recipient of One Globe Award-2016 for leadership in Transforming Governance for the 21st Century. He is a Member of the Steering Board of “Shaping the Future of Production Systems” of the World Economic Forum.

Anand Mahindra

Anand Mahindra is currently the Chairman of the Mahindra Group. Founded as a steel trading company in 1945, the Group today is a global federation of companies united by a common purpose – to enable people to ‘Rise’.

Anand began his journey with the Mahindra Group as an executive assistant to the Finance Director of Mahindra Ugine Steel Company after receiving his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1981. In April 1997, Anand was appointed MD of M&M Ltd. Under his leadership, Mahindra saw the successful acquisition of Ssangyong Motors, Reva Electric Car Company, Satyam Computer Services and several others. In August 2012, Anand was appointed Chairman of the Mahindra Group.

In addition to his successes in the corporate world, Anand has also contributed to the advancement of the humanities. He founded Project Nanhi Kali, an NGO to provide financial and academic support to underprivileged girls across India. He also contributed $10 million to support the Harvard Humanities Center in honor of his mother.

Anand has regularly been noted as one of the most influential business leaders on Twitter and was included in Fortune Magazine’s list of ‘World’s 50 Greatest Leaders’.

Dr.Ramanathan

Dr. Ramanathan V. Ramani or Dr. RVR as he is known, is the founder and the managing trutee of Sankara Eye Foundation. Sankara Eye foundation, India is a unit of SEF and is one of the country’s leading eye care service providers.

The 71-year-old pioneer co-founded the institution on 21 May 1977, as a primary healthcare center as part of the Sri KanchiKamakoti Medical Trust, along with his wife and co-practitioner DrRadha Ramani. Till today, both of them provide their time, resources and expertise totally free for this movement of Sankara. The institute then blossomed into a full-fledged eye care hospital in 1985 on 5.5 acres of gifted land. Today, Dr. RVR oversees 10 Sankara Eye Hospitals that have performed over 2.1 million eye surgeries. Under his guidance, many innovative programs were created like the award winning Gift of Vision outreach program screening millions of people, Rainbow program for early detection and prevention and Sankara Academy of Vision as a capacity building arm, offering Post Graduate and undergraduate courses for Doctors, Administrators and Paramedics.

Dr. RVR has received numerous national and international awards. Some of them include the award from the President of India for Role Model award in 2000 and in 2019 was honored with the Padma Shri by the Indian government.

A “Thumbs-Up” from Sukanya

Newsletter