founding team
Rahul Cherian
co-founder and policy head
alumnus of the National Law School in Bangalore, founder and managing partner of IndoJuris Law Offices, a law firm with offices in Delhi and Chennai. he specialises in intellectual property rights and is recommended by the Legal 500 for his expertise in this field. he is also a leading disability policy activist with extensive work in the area of copyright law. he was invited to assist the world blind union to draft the proposed international treaty for the blind, to be presented to the world intellectual property organization.
Sachin Malhan
co-founder and chief executive officer
alumnus of the National Law School in Bangalore, after an year's stint at Amarchand Mangaldas, the nation's leading corporate law firm, took the path of entrepreneurship. since then, he has co-founded two industry-leading companies aside from inclusive planet. his first venture was Law School Tutorials, India's leading law test prep outfit with centres in more than 50 cities. LST is a case study at the Indian School of Business Hyderabad and was acquired by leading edu-corporate Career Launcher in 2004. Sachin then co-founded Rainmaker Training & Recruitment which he led till March 2008. Rainmaker is a market leader in talent management services for the legal industry, and an emerging force in legal training and industry knowledge services. he continues to serve as a director on the Rainmaker board.
Reuben Jacob
co-founder and chief technology officer
a graduate of National Institute of Technology in Calicut, Reuben is the founder and CEO of Acrodelon Technologies, a technology incubation company based in Kochi. Prior to founding Acrodelon, Reuben served as the director of engineering at Common Point Inc., which is now a part of Bentley Systems Inc. his technical expertise is in large-scale software systems and software engineering methodologies.
Janani Barath
head of research
a disability activist with over 8 years of experience, she has worked with people with different kinds of disability but her main area of specialization is working with deaf children and their families. her experience ranges from working in rural areas to urban slums and grass-root level organizations to various international NGO's and funding agencies. she is passionate about recognizing the ability in every individual and in promoting the concept of 'informed choice' for persons with disabilities and their family members.
Kumar Ray
head of new products
a graduate of the Asian Institute of Management, Manila and Colby College in Maine where he completed a double major in economics and environmental policy. between his undergraduate degree and his MBA, kumar has accumulated three years of rich experience as a business analyst and team leader in a boutique IT consulting firm in Chicago. Kumar is a voracious reader and also enjoys cooking up new dishes and hiking in his spare time.
Anant Gopal
head of product design
began his career as a visualiser for design shop in Chennai. after completing his MBA, he worked with Airtel as a manager in marketing, before moving on to a marketing role at a start-up, taxyantra.com. he has a masters from the Indian School of Business Hyderabad and a bachelors in Communications from Loyola College, Chennai. enjoys computer games, road trips and believes it is time Pinky and the Brain took over the world.
Simon Jacob
head of marketing and project management
a PGDM from Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode and a mechanical engineer from MSU Baroda, Simon has a set of diverse interests and a consistent track record of all round proficiency across work, academics and extra-curricular activities. he has over 5 years of work experience in sales, channel management and sales assurance. in his last stint as an associate vice president at HSBC, he led the 16 member sales assurance team. he is an avid sports enthusiast with a keen interest in tennis and cricket.
Ujjvala Ballal
marketing and international relationships
a graduate from University Law College, Bangalore, Ujjvala has studied in Bangalore, Dubai, and Coorg. she has been involved with AIESEC, the leading international student organization on a voluntary and full time basis for the past 5 years. during her tenure there she has lead the marketing team in Bangalore as well as nationally for AIESEC India. she has led the Bangalore chapter of AIESEC for one year and been part of a global team managing marketing strategy among young people. she loves to travel and read books. She is trying to learn Spanish at the moment.
advisors
Vivek Trilokinath
Vivek has worked on strategy & management issues and helped build world class businesses for some of the leading firms across US, Europe and Asia-Pacific. he headed strategy for international banking group for ICICI Bank and led some of the breakthroughs for the bank in new markets and business areas. aside from being passionate about inclusive planet and advising the founding team from the very beginning, Vivek advises several other ventures in matters of strategy. Vivek is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
Shanti Raghavan
founder of Enable India, a non-governmental organization that is nationally reputed for its work in training differently-abled persons for employment, she received the prestigious Ashoka Foundation fellowship for her efforts in this space.inclusive planet is working with Enable India to create technological solutions to facilitate the training and employment of differently-abled persons.
Javed Abidi
India's best-known disability rights activist, he has argued in the supreme court, squatted on sidewalks and pavements and protested outside homes of legislators and politicians to bring about change. he has played a critical role in pushing through key reforms for the differently-abled including the Persons With Disabilities Act and subsequent policy changes. he was formerly the head of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and is currently the convenor of the National Commission for Promotion of Employment of Disabled Persons (NCPEDP).
Joyojeet Pal
Joyojeet is a research associate at the University of Washington. his work focuses on the technology adoption among new users, especially in low-resource scenarios. within this space, he has examined from a public policy perspective various uses of computers in developing regions - these include computer uses in Indian primary schools, in cybercafes in urban Brazil, and in telecenters for people with disabilities in several states of Latin America. Joyojeet received his doctorate in city and regional planning at the University of California at Berkeley.
Gautam John
Gautam John started out as a lawyer with a focus on Intellectual Property Laws. Post that, he has been an entrepreneur in the food industry, an agriculturalist of sorts, worked as a small wheel in the cogs of a large company and now works in the non-profit field within the folds of education and publishing. During this time, he has also been fortunate to advise a few small startups in the legal, food and social entrepreneurship space.
founding investors
Rajiv Kuchhal
an investor and a technologist, was one of the first employees of Infosys and was part of the founding team of Progeon. he left Infosys as vice president and moved to take an early stage role as COO at Onmobile.
Jawad Ayaz
an investor, technologist and serial entrepreneur, he has recently founded 20north.com and is the acting CEO. his past ventures include Openera Technologies and Xybridge Technologies. he was featured by Red Herring as India's leading technology entrepreneur. he is also the managing director of The Monster Fishing Company.
Sanjeev Joshi
an investor and an entrepreneur, he is the founder of technology investing outfit Ebhana Technologies and also a director on the board of Invendis Technologies.
Kiran Gera
chairperson of one of India's leading advertising agencies, Network Advertising, she is also the vice president of SCWEC i.e. SAARC Chamber of Women Entrepreneurs Council. an alumnus of Delhi School of Economics, she was the first person to design and bring cable television to Bombay. she has also been the president of the women's wing of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).
Sandeep Farias
managing director at Elevar Equity, a global growth investor focused on the underserved four billion at the base of the pyramid in developing countries. he is an alumnus of NLS and was formerly country director of Unitus. prior to that, he was corporate practice head of leading law firm, Nishith Desai Associates.
Jairaj Basavaraj
chairman of the HRB group based in Bangalore. the HRB group is a large business conglomerate based in Bangalore with varied business interests ranging from real estate to hospitality.
Philip John
Is a leader in the dehydrated food ingredients business in India. His company was recently acquired by ITC Ltd. He currently operates a joint venture with ITC Ltd.
Chandramouli Janakiraman
Is the CTO and Co-founder of OnMobile. He has over 19 years of experience in the software industry and previously served as Associate Vice President and Head of the Internet Products Group in Infosys Technologies Limited
Siddharth Raja & Priya Rao
Siddharth Raja - Is a commercial and transactional lawyer and a founding partner of the Bangalore-headquartered law Firm, Narasappa, Doraswamy & Raja (NDR). Although founded only in early 2006, NDR is already ranked by the Asia Pacific Legal 500 (in its 2009-10 edition) as a Tier 1 law firm in Bangalore.
Priya Rao - Siddharth's wife - is currently a full-time mom to their two lovely daughters, aged 3 years and 2 months, respectively. An alumnus of NLS, her last venture was a start-up in the LPO space, which she helped co-found after stinting with a Bombay law firm and picking up a post-graduate degree in law in Hong Kong.
Dr. Ashish Gupta
Is a co-founder of Helion Ventures and serves on the boards of Gridstone Research, Jivox, Kirusa, MuSigma, Naukri.com, and SMS Gupshup. He has co-founded two successful companies - Tavant Technologies and Junglee that pioneered comparison shopping on the internet. His investments include Daksh (IBM), Odesk, Obongo (AOL), Speedera (Akamai), MakeMyTrip, Merittrac (Manipal Group), and Kaboodle (Hearst).
Kanwal Singh
Is a co-founder of Helion Ventures and has over 20 years of experience in the areas of venture investing, marketing and business development across multiple sectors in India. In addition to his role at Helion, he serves on the boards of Jigrahak Mobility, Hurix Systems, Amba Research and Humming Bird Suites.
partners
The Centre for Internet and Society, India
CIS critically engages with concerns of digital pluralism, public accountability and pedagogic practices, in the field of internet and society, with particular emphasis on south-south dialogues and exchange. through multidisciplinary research, intervention, and collaboration, CIS seeks to explore, understand, and affect the shape and form of the internet, and its relationship with the political, cultural, and social milieu of our times.
CIS has nurtured and supported inclusive planet from its inception and encouraged our vision. the CIS team has spent countless hours advising and counseling us, has allowed us to use their office, gave us food when we were hungry and coffee when we were sleepy. CIS and inclusive planet also work closely on policy change.