Core Team

Cornell University classmates and tennis teammates, Greg and Abishek, ventured into the world of Entrepreneurship several years ago, each separately, on opposite sides of the globe. Now Greg and Abishek are the co CEO’s and Managing Director’s of Indavest.

Abishek Laxminarayan

Abishek Laxminarayan has a varied background in Venture Capital, Investment Banking (M&A), Software & ITES for Financial Services and Entrepreneurship.

Prior to co-founding Indavest in early 2007, Abishek was founder and Managing Director of Surya Infotainment Products, a Bangalore-based information aggregation company. After purchasing interests in the companies of L.B. Publishers and Distributors, Abishek realigned SIP and transformed the company into a market leader in the space. Prior to that, he spent time as an M&A Analyst in Investment Banking focusing on global technology and ITES companies at Lehman Brothers in New York. Working closely on strategic initiatives for companies such as IBM, HP and other leading technology leaders laid the foundation for his strong fundamental understanding of successful technology companies. On his return to India, he worked in the financial software domain at HCL Technologies (formerly Deutsche Software). Managing a team of programmers in Bangalore, Abishek worked closely with Deutsche Bank London in delivering ambitious financial software applications.

Abishek is a charter member of TiE, Bangalore. He was a world-ranked junior Tennis player, and graduated with honors with a bachelor’s degree in Economics & Computer Science from Cornell University.


Gregory Artzt

Greg Artzt has had varied experience in many facets of Financial Markets, Software products, and Entrepreneurship.

Prior to co-founding Indavest in early 2007, Greg was Vice-President at Vegaplus Capital Partners, and one of the founding members at Element Capital Fund, a hedge-fund focused on Macro and Relative-value trading in the fixed-income arena. Greg assisted Element in producing consistently high returns for his full two-year tenure with the fund. Greg successfully managed and traded an interest-rate options portfolio, in addition to other roles as risk-manager, and systems developer. Prior to Vega, Greg worked at Citigroup Global Markets for over three years in several capacities. First in Municipal bonds structured products, Greg focused on creating levered exposure of Municipal bonds for Institutional investors. Later he was a proprietary trader for the Municipal arbitrage desk before becoming a market-making trader of Fixed-Income derivatives. As an Associate, he was given his first risk-management role as manager of the short-tenor options portfolio. In all capacities, Greg was forced to become highly proficient in analyzing and interpreting macro-economic indicators, global events, and corporate growth potential.

Before his career in Finance, Greg worked in Enterprise software for Computer Associates, and was also an aspiring Professional Tennis player. Greg holds a bachelors degree in Computer Science from Cornell University.

Saurabh Mehta

Saurabh is a Senior Associate at Indavest Ventures LLC, where he has been involved in many strategic roles over the last year. In addition to sourcing and evaluating deal-flow, he has played a particularly key role as interim head of GKVale.com, one of the early and focus companies in the Indavest portfolio.

Prior to joining Indavest, Saurabh worked as a freelance consultant with an Italian Consulting company where he helped prepare an exhaustive report on an entry strategy for an Italian Bank into the Indian marketplace. While in Italy, Saurabh also worked for Eli Lilly in financial planning and budgeting directly under the CFO.

Before going to Italy to do his MBA, Saurabh worked with IBM as a Technical Analyst and Project Manager. He was involved in hiring and ensuring the quality of deliverables for the project. He was awarded ‘Best Analyst’ for his term at IBM. Saurabh received a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from Visveswaraiah Technological University. He holds an MBA degree from SDA Bocconi School in Management (Milan, Italy) and an exchange program diploma at Duke University, USA.


Ram Sateesh Talari

Ram is a Senior Technology Analyst at Indavest Ventures LLC, offering technology expertise to the portfolio companies. Before joining Indavest, Ram worked as a Senior Consultant with USi Internetworking Services Pvt. Ltd. at Hyderabad. Ram received Bachelor in Engineering from NIT - Trichy, India. He holds MS from IIIT – Hyderabad, India.

Advisory Members

Ganesh Rengaswamy

Ganesh Rengaswamy is an Investment Advisor at Indavest Ventures LLC (Indavest Capital Division). He has over 12 years of global experience in Venture capital, growth investing, entrepreneurship and operating roles across technology, media, financial services, mobile, consumer businesses, retail and IT services.

Most recently, Ganesh was India investments lead at Greylock Partners, a leading Silicon-Valley based Venture Capital fund. He evaluated over 200 companies with Greylock, established strong relationships and a valuable deal-pipeline in the Indian ecosystem. Prior to joining Greylock, he spent significant time in various entrepreneurial and operating roles helping numerous global companies achieve market leadership positions. In 2004, Ganesh co-founded Travelguru, the online travel leader in hotels and vacations in India and South Asia. At Travelguru, he was responsible for strategic start-up initiatives including customer acquisition, operations team setup, initial fund raising and senior management hiring and marketing. Prior to Travelguru, Ganesh managed mission critical engagements for Fortune 500 clients across various industries during his 5 years at Infosys Technologies. He was an integral part of Infosys client acquisition teams that led proposals of over USD 100 million and helped develop strategic relationships with technology product vendors to drive Infosys system integration initiative. Before Infosys, he founded an investment fund, where he primarily invested long in small cap growth companies in CPG, financial services and technology. His most successful investments were Infosys, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank.

Ganesh has been management advisor to several start-ups, growth stage companies and investing firms in India and in the US. He is a frequent speaker at several entrepreneurial and investing forums including TiE Chapters in India and IIM. Ganesh received Bachelor in Engineering from IIT-BHU, India, where he was a Gold Medalist. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a graduate degree in Finance and Systems strategy from IIM-Calcutta, India.

 

Sanjay Singh

Sanjay is currently an advisor to Indavest. He is the Managing Director for Strategy and Corporate Development group in Asia-Pacific for Hewlett-Packard where he is responsible for the company’s acquisitions, equity investments and strategic alliances in the region.

Prior to this role, Sanjay was the President and Managing Director of Global e-Business Operations Pvt Ltd, a Hewlett-Packard company where he was responsible for managing the company’s Business Process Outsourcing business in India.

Sanjay's experience includes general management roles at IBM, Accenture and UPS.

He is also active in advising and mentoring young entrepreneurs in India and US and is involved with Advisory Boards of a no of private companies and Venture Capital firms in India.