Rajeev is a first-generation entrepreneur and Angel investor in technology start-ups.

He along with his brother built one of India’s largest Security, Safety & Building Automation companies, which was acquired by Siemens.

Subsequently, they are focusing their efforts on technology businesses for the Building & Transportation verticals, with a presence in Australia, India, Ireland, Singapore, and the USA.

Rajeev is an alumnus of Loyola College and University of Chicago, Booth School of Business.

He is an Executive Committee member of The Chennai Angels, Charter Member of TiE Chennai, and Founding Director of Chennai International Centre (CIC). He is the Founder President of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization in Chennai, former Regional Chair of the Young Presidents’ Organization in South Asia, and is also the Honorary Consul of Ireland in Tamil Nadu.

Mahalingam K (Mali) is a Partner / Director at TSM Group of companies and a member of The Chennai Angels.

A Chemical Engineer from REC Trichy and an MBA from IIM Calcutta, Mali joined the family business in January 1988. TSM then was a single location car dealership in Chennai, employing around 10 people and selling around 75 pre-owned cars per month. TSM & Sons today is one of the largest pre-owned car dealerships in South India and currently sells around 5000 cars a year across locations.

On joining the business, Mali immediately started diversifying by partnering with Citibank to pioneer 3rd party distribution of financial products in India. This business entity over the last 24 years has transformed itself into a large ‘Financial Super Store’ which represents all leading Banks/Financial Institutions Industry.

TSM Group entered the real estate development business in 2003, operating under the brand Shreyas Investments. It focuses on land, residential and commercial development. TSM has completed over 100 projects in Chennai to date.

TSM also offers real estate advisory services under the brand ‘Qualitas’.

Qualitas counts amongst its client’s MNCs, large corporates, and leading developers in Chennai.

Mali is also a stakeholder and Chairman of M/s. Enzotech Solutions Pvt. Ltd, the pioneers in the field of wastewater treatment plants.

With his professional qualification, varied business interests, and hands-on experience in building successful businesses, Mali continues to be passionate about exploring new business models.

Padma Chandrasekaran is an angel investor actively seeking opportunities to invest in promising young startups. She has worked in senior and executive-level positions for 18 years in the for-profit and 8 years in the non-profit and research sectors in India and abroad.

Padma’s private sector experience (1984-2003) followed a standard gradient of developer, manager, executive officer, and entrepreneur in the IT sector in India, the US, and the UK. She was a founding member of Sify Ltd and part of the team that took it public on NASDAQ in 1999. She subsequently founded, ran, and then successfully sold a web services software technology company.

Between 2003 and 2011, she worked for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she held responsibilities for strategy development, program management, and impact evaluation in various areas of health technologies and services (e.g., vaccine development and delivery) and human development (e.g., water and sanitation, agriculture). She continues to consult for the foundation and other international health tech and research organizations.

Since mid-2012, Padma has pursued opportunities in angel investing. She is a member of The Chennai Angels. Her current angel investment interests include biotech, health, and clean energy. She is on the advisory board of a mobile technology company enabling logistics and supply chain management for essential drugs, vaccines, and devices.

Padma holds a Bachelor’s degree in Statistics from Presidency College, Calcutta; an MBA (PGP 1984) from IIM Ahmedabad, and a Master’s degree in Telecommunications from the University of San Francisco, California. She has authored several highly cited peer-reviewed publications in premier, high impact journals such as The Lancet and the BMJ.

Padma is considered slightly-nerdy by friends and colleagues, and outside work, likes frittering away the time reading and discussing completely inconsequential things such as economics, science, and technology, philosophy, history, and science fiction. She is also an ardent fan of both systems of Indian classical music.

Chandu has over 30 years of experience in industry, consultancy, media, and information services. A co-founder of Scope e-Knowledge Center, a pioneering knowledge process outsourcing company that scaled up to 1000+ people before his exit, his areas of focus were business development and fundraising, and his passion was enterprise building and transformation.

Chandu has direct experience in angel, VC, and strategic investor funding and has also been a part of two exits. He was also involved in the creation of other enterprises, most of which were ho-hum or failed.

A key focus for him now is entrepreneurship and helping strengthen the entrepreneur ecosystem. He advises entrepreneurs and enterprises in creating and building their business. He has also invested in some start-ups and the jury is still out on their fate. He is also on the advisory board of a Chennai based private equity firm. He is an active charter member of TiE Chennai and has been closely involved with its mentoring initiative.

A Postgraduate in Management from IIM, Ahmedabad, he has been a member of various industry panels both in India and overseas as also a visiting faculty in various business schools.

Ramakrishnan K (Ramki) is Senior Managing Director Strategic Relationships at Spark Capital Advisors (India) Pvt. Ltd.

Ramki is a veteran investment banker, with close to thirty years of experience across the entire spectrum of corporate finance and investment banking, covering private equity capital raising, mergers & acquisitions, joint ventures, and capital market transactions.

As part of the founding leadership at Spark Capital, Ramki has actively co-led and contributed to the growth and transformation of Spark Capital from an advisory boutique to a leading mid-market full-service investment bank.

Prior to Spark Capital, Ramki headed the investment banking business for ICICI Securities in southern India. Apart from being on the Executive Committee of The Chennai Angels, Ramki sits on the General Committee of the Madras Chamber and the Managing Committee of the Madras Management Association.

He is a founding fellow of The Chennai International Centre. He is a mechanical engineer with a post-graduate in Management.

Prem has been one of the key business leaders of HCL. His association with the group spans many years in various capacities across HCL Limited, HCL Frontline, Deutsche Software, HCL Technologies, and presently HCL Infosystems Ltd.

He is the Executive Vice-Chairman of HCL Infosystems Ltd. and focuses on building and executing a robust transformation agenda to augment the pace and sustainability of profitable growth at HCL Infosystems. His specific focus is around a robust ‘turnaround’.

Between 2012 and early 2014, he was with Apollo Hospitals Group, as the Group CEO. Prior to that, Prem was the Senior Corporate Officer and President for HCL Technologies, where he led the Financial Services vertical from USD 100 M business to over USD 1 Billion in a quick, profitable, and organic way.

He is the Chairman of the CII National Committee on IT &ITeS and is actively involved in strategic and policy-making agendas to promote and shape the Industry.

He is a Charter Member of TiE Chennai, involved with their various activities. He is also the Corporate Advisory Board member of edX, an online learning destination founded by Harvard and MIT.

He is a sports enthusiast and a much sought out speaker. He is also a member of many young

start-ups.

Mr. CK Ranganathan was born in Cuddalore to parents with a primary interest in education. He took up his Bachelors in Chemistry and after a short stint in the family business, he set up Chik India. The Company began its journey as Chik India and was renamed CavinKare Pvt. Ltd (CKPL) in 1998 with a starting investment of Rs. 15, 000/-

The Company manufactures and markets many products under the brand of Chik, Spinz, Fairever, Meera, Nyle, Raaga Professional, Karthika, Indica, Ruchi, Chinnis, Maa, Garden and Cavins etc both in domestic and international markets.

The Company has pioneered the concept of Family Salons in India with its specialist brands Limelite and Green Trends, and hence started Trends In Vogue Pvt. Ltd a Group Company which has a clear-cut focus on providing personal styling and beauty solutions to everyone in the family.

Mr. Ranganathan was the Chairman of Confederation of Indian Industry, Tamil Nadu State Council for the year 2009/10. He was also the past President of the Madras Management Association.

CK Ranganathan is one of the founder-members of the Ability Foundation, an NGO working towards the rehabilitation of the disabled.

He instituted CAVINKARE ABILITY AWARDS to celebrate annually the exemplary spirit of a rare breed of individuals who have risen above their physical limitations to display that attitude is everything.

He also instituted an annual Chinnikrishnan Innovation Awards to encourage small and tiny entrepreneurs in memory of his father Shri. R Chinnikrishnan, the man who pioneered the sachet revolution.

Mr. Ranganathan was conferred the prestigious ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ award by the Economic Times in 2004. He was also conferred the award of ‘CEO WITH HR ORIENTATION’ by the Employer Branding Institute which recognizes Asia’s Best Employer Brands in Singapore.

Reji Joseph is a Chartered Accountant with a degree in Economics from Loyola College in Chennai.

He has leadership-based expertise evaluating key business drivers and developing strategies to achieve sustained profitable growth for stakeholders. He possesses on-site international experience and has served on the boards of prominent companies. 

He has exhibited his business acumen in providing insights to realize the vision of corporates and capture regional opportunities via expansion, repositioning, M&A, turnarounds, and business culture transformations. He has successfully built a solid track record of success.

Reji served as the CEO at Al Anwar Holdings, a listed private equity company where he was able to turn the group around to register record growth and performance. 

He assumed charge when the company reported record losses and orchestrated a rebuilding that saw a record turnaround in profits in their corporate history. In 2016, the Oman Economic Review ranked him among the top 100 CEOs. 

He was previously associated with KPMG as their Director of Corporate Finance. A major chunk of his work experience has revolved around management/private equity/corporate finance over the past 2 decades.

Presently residing in Chennai, he is now a respected investor, advisor, social worker, and artist in his free time. He is the trustee and treasurer of Prathysaha ‘A Home of Hope’ which is an NGO for children with HIV/AIDS.  

Being a gifted artist he has held solo and group exhibitions. His works can be viewed on the website www.reji7000.com. His paintings were showcased in a month-long solo exhibition held in March 2018 which was sponsored by DakshinaChitra. 

His artworks have also been selected for the Affordable Art Fair in New York in 2018. 

In his free time, Reji enjoys a round of golf, indulges in scuba diving, practices martial arts, and relaxes with cycling.

He is an active member of The Chennai Angels and is also associated with The Madras Management Association and the TiE – Chennai Chapter.

R Ramaraj is a serial entrepreneur who has been involved in ventures in IT cellular and Internet. His last venture was Sify, where he was the Co-Founder and CEO and was the first Indian Internet Company from India to list on NASDAQ National Market in the US (NASDAQ SIFY).

He was recognized as the Evangelist of the Year at the India Internet World Convention in September 2000 and was also voted the IT Person of the year 2000, and in 2001, in a CNET.com poll in India,

Currently, he is the Senior Advisor at Elevar Advisors Pvt Ltd. He is also associated with a couple of funds focusing in the social sector. He is a Member of the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta

He is on the board of Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ) a Not for Profit organization. OGQ is committed to bridging the gap between the best athletes in India and the best athletes in the world thus helping Indian athletes to win Olympic Gold medals. He is the Co-Founder and Director of Coaching Foundation of India, an organization that trains and certifies CEO Coaches.

He is the first Indian to be invited to the Board of Directors of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)where he served for 6 years as an Independent Director. He was a member of the Global Board of Trustees of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs).

In 2010, CII recognized him with a Lifetime Achievement Award for nurturing the Spirit of Entrepreneurship and inspiring and mentoring numerous entrepreneurs.

He worked in Johnson & Johnson in Sales & Marketing for over 7 years and subsequently co-founded Computer Point & Microland.

R.Ramaraj holds a B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from the University of Madras and an M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Bharat Garg was born in Chennai, and did his primary and senior schooling from Don Bosco Egmore, Chennai (Batch of 1990). He completed his Bachelor’s in Commerce from DG Vaishnav College (Madras University), Chennai (Batch of 1993). He also completed his Executive MBA (PGPMAX 2014) from Indian School of Business (ISB). As a part of his MBA program, he had international immersions in Whatron School of University of Pennsylvania, and Kellogg School of Management of Northwestern University, Illinois.

Bharat has over 27 years experience in the steel industry. He has been involved in the manufacturing of long steel products (TMT/Reinforcement steel bars). He is currently a director at Pulkit TMT. He also has experience in manufacturing, sales & marketing of these products in the five southern states of India.

Bharat’s interests include yoga, cycling, trekking, and good food. He is also an animal and art lover. Bharat’s wife, Preeti Garg has been in the art business since 2010. She is the co-founder of Chennai’s finest art gallery named M/s Gallery Veda ( galleryveda.com ), Rutland Gate, Nungambakkam. Preeti is an alumnus of Good Shepard, Chennai, and Ethiraj College, Egmore, Chennai.

Bharat’s son, Advait Garg has finished his education from Sishya School, Chennai, and studied Mathematics and Economics from Emory University, Atlanta, GA. He is now working in the AI industry with, Mad Street Den, a Chennai based tech startup.

Mridula Ramesh is the founder of the Sundaram Climate Institute, which focuses on solid waste and water solutions and education.

She is an active angel investor in cleantech startups, with a portfolio of over a dozen and counting. 

A graduate with distinction from Cornell University and armed with an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Mridula has worked at McKinsey in Silicon Valley before returning to India. 

Leveraging on her two decades of management experience, she teaches a postgraduate class on climate change at the Great Lakes Institute of Management. 

She is a regular columnist with Firstpost on climate change and has also written extensively for The Hindu. 

She is the Executive Director of Sundaram Textiles and lives and experiments in Madurai in a net zero-waste house with her husband and two children.