Advisory Board

Advisory Board

Aswath Damodaran
Aswath Damodaran
Aswath Damodaran is the Kerschner Family Chair Professor in Finance Education at the Stern School of Business at New York University. Damodaran is best known as author of several widely used academic and practitioner texts on Valuation, Corporate Finance and Investment Management; he is widely quoted on the subject of valuation, with "a great reputation as a teacher and authority." He has written several books on equity valuation, as well as on corporate finance and investments. He has also widely published in leading journals of finance. He was profiled in Business Week as one of the top 12 U.S. business school professors. Damodaran holds M.B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the UCLA Anderson. In India he has studied at the Loyola College, Chennai and the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.
Avnish Sabharwal
Avnish Sabharwal
Avnish is an innovator, strategist and a technology evangelist with more than 25 years of experience on Innovation, Digital Transformation, Corporate Strategy, and Leadership Development for Top 500 Fortune clients in both mature and emerging markets. He has also advised many Global Captives on their Innovation and Digital roadmap. Currently he is responsible for designing and leading the Innovation agenda for Accenture in Growth Markets including partnering with the Start-up ecosystem. His role includes scaling Accenture's digital and innovation capabilities and work extensively with the Indian and Global start-up ecosystem. Prior to Accenture, he worked with IBM in India and the United Kingdom for almost a decade in various leadership roles. He has been instrumental in opening up the startup collaboration between India and Israel and is regarded as an expert on the global DeepTech startup eco-systems. He was awarded the Most Innovative Leader Award, 2018, by World Innovation Congress. He has an MBA with distinction from Warwick Business School, UK and Specialization in Strategy from Harvard Business School and Insead and on Innovation from MIT.
Gerard George
Gerard George
Gerard George is Dean and Lee Kong Chian Chair Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore Management University. Previously, he was Deputy Dean and founding director of Gandhi Centre for Inclusive Innovation at Imperial College London. Before Imperial College London, he was a professor at London Business School and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. From 2013 to 2016, he was Editor of the Academy of Management Journal, the flagship empirical journal in the field of management. In 2010, he was awarded a prestigious Professorial Fellowship by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council for his research on low cost innovation and inclusive growth. For his work in India and Africa on inclusive innovation, he was conferred the honorary title of Fellow of the City & Guilds of London Institute in 2015. He was awarded honorary doctorate in economic sciences by the University of St.Gallen, Switzerland. Gerard George has numerous academic papers to his credit. His recent books include ‘The Handbook of Inclusive Innovation’, ‘The Business Model Book’, and ‘Managing Natural Resources’. An award-winning researcher and teacher, Professor George has published over 100 articles with 30,000 citations. In 2019, he received the Web of Science “Highly Cited Researcher” distinction for Cross-Field Impact. His areas of research are in innovation, entrepreneurship, sustainability and tackling grand challenges in society.
Gopal Srinivasan
Gopal Srinivasan
Gopal Srinivasan is the Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of TVS Capital. Over an entrepreneurial career spanning 30 years, he has incubated 8 companies operating in diverse sectors including technology, financial services & auto components. A passionate entrepreneur and an avid angel investor, he is actively involved in the promotion of Entrepreneurship. He is the Founding member of "The Chennai Angels", one of the premier angels investing networks in India. He is a Governing Council member of Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH), a centre for idea generation and development to provide the facilitating environment, encourage collaboration, and in the process promote innovation in the financial sector. Gopal is also a non-official member on the National Start-up Advisory Council (NSAC), formed by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPITT) to advise the Government of India on measures needed to build a strong eco-system for nurturing innovation and start-ups in the country to drive sustainable economic growth and generate large scale employment opportunities. He is a member of University of Michigan’s India Advisory Board. Gopal is also the Chairman of Chennai International Centre. Gopal has been recently appointed as the Honorary Consul General for the Kingdom of Netherlands in Tamil Nadu. Gopal is an MBA from the Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.
Josh Lerner
Josh Lerner
Josh Lerner is the Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking at the Harvard Business School He is a member of the European Corporate Governance Institute. Much of his research focuses on venture capital and private equity organizations. He co-directs the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program and serves as co-editor of their publication, Innovation Policy and the Economy. He founded and runs the Private Capital Research Institute, a nonprofit devoted to encouraging access to data and research, and has been a frequent leader of and participant in the World Economic Forum projects and events. Among other recognitions, he is the winner of the Swedish government’s Global Entrepreneurship Research Award and Cheng Siwei Award for Venture Capital Research. Josh Lerner graduated from Yale University, and he earned a PhD in Economics from Harvard University.
Kris Gopalakrishnan
Kris Gopalakrishnan
Kris Gopalakrishnan is widely recognized as a global business and technology thought leader for his role in growing the IT services industry worldwide. He co-founded Infosys, where he served as the chief executive officer, managing director and also as a vice chairman during different period of time. Following his retirement from Infosys, Kris has been very active in promoting the Indian startup ecosystem, and philanthropically supporting research on brain sciences, aging related disorders, and healthcare in India. Government of India awarded Kris Gopalakrishnan the Padma Bhushan, the country’s third-highest civilian honour. He was voted the top CEO, IT Services category in Institutional Investor's inaugural ranking of Asia's Top Executives and selected as one of the winners of the second Asian Corporate Director Recognition Awards by Corporate Governance Asia in 2011. He actively shapes the technology and startup ecosystem through a myriad of roles. Kris Gopalakrishnan has served in leadership roles in several research, educational, industry, startup institutions and forums.
Sarath Naru
Sarath Naru
Sarath is the Founder and Managing Partner of Ventureast, one of India’s longest-standing venture capital institutions investing in pioneering sectors since the mid-90s. Ventureast manages over $300 million having made close to 100 investments. As an entrepreneur, he has built a trading business between India and the USA, covering engineering & fashion goods, and printing related services. Sarath has a B.Tech from IIT, Madras and an MBA from Booth, University of Chicago. He has been associated at Board level positions with the IVCA, ABLE, IITM Research Park, ICRISAT, PanIIT Association, Ascent Capital, Equitas Micro-Housing, Annapurna Microfinance, among others.