Leadership Team

Ravi Narayan
Ravi is a founder and Managing Director of Mentor Partners, one of the most successful early stage mentoring and venture funds in India. He brings several years of experience in the entrepreneurial world to help his portfolio companies achieve their maximum potential. The portfolio company of Mentor Partners includes Ugenie (sold to Lulu), Ilantus, Bubble Motion, Atlantis Computing, Elina Networks and atOnePlace.

He is a serial entrepreneur having started American Systems International (ASI) providing IT solutions for the US federal market, Nextone Communications (sold to Genband), a global leader in the VoIP space and Astuto Networks (sold to Ismart International), an India based company specializing in network infrastructure products for the emerging markets. Ravi has also worked at various technical and management levels for IBM and Hughes Network Systems.

He has Bachelors of Technology from IIT Madras, and MS in Industrial Engineering & MBA from University of Southern California. He is a founding member of PAN-IIT and charter member of the TiE organization . He is also on the board of MentorSquare Advisors Limited (a network of experts and expertise for Entrepreneurs worldwide) and Niyojit Financial Consultancy Pvt Ltd (Financial Services Company).

Prabhakar Valivati
Prabhakar has 20 years of business management experience spanning areas of business planning, finance strategies, marketing and international business management. He has worked in key roles at TVS Suzuki and Wipro prior to co-founding RelQ Software, building the company from scratch and eventually selling it to EDS. He has since co-founded Mentor Partners, an early stage Mentoring firm, as well as MentorSquare. Prabhakar has a BS in Electronics Engineering from the Bangalore University and an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Nagendra Satyan
Nagendra Satyan (Chief Operating Officer), brings over twenty years of experience in IT and Management Consulting and another eight years in industry. In his latest assignment at EMC India, where he led the engineering organization as Vice President and GM, he built it from a 20 to a 1000-member strong team in a span of 36 months, covering all the product lines. Prior to joining EMC, Nagendra was the Managing Director at Sanware Storage Solutions; Country Manager at Accelerated Networks India; COO at Princeton Consulting, India ; President, Network Programs, Bangalore ; and Head of Management Consulting, Tata Consultancy Services, Bangalore . His experience in IT spans the areas of start up and management of a large multi-national software organization, steering it through establishment, growth and building multi-site software project execution and delivery capability. Experience in consulting spans the areas of strategic planning, organization structuring, management systems and processes, diversification and investment strategy. Nagendra is an Engineering graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur , and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Balaji Pasumarthy
Balaji, Co-founder of MentorSquare, likes to call himself the Business Catalyst.The platforms he has created helps others succeed in Business. He is the founder of www.Businessgyan.com, the destination for Business Knowledge. Businessgyan provides inspiring and practical articles for Entrepreneurs and decision makers. His first venture, Golden Square Serviced & Virtual Offices, has been a launch pad for more than 350 companies. As Executive Director of BNI in Bangalore, he helps businesses find customers easily. MentorSquare for him is a powerful way to enable Entrepreneurs succeed with the wisdom of those who have already travelled the path to success. To Balaji, Entrepreneurship is a passion, and his mission is to increase the success rate for Entrepreneurs. He did his Post Graduation from the IIM- Bangalore, and B-Tech from IIT Madras.

Sudhir Kapu
Mr. Sudhir has 20 years of experience in IT and has been consulting at senior levels with companies ranging from startups to Fortune 100 corporations. He is an enthusiastic proponent about technology and its impact on business and productivity.

Renukaprasad Belgur
Mr. Renukaprasad Belgur is a Lead Mentor on MentorSquare. He is Executive Director Technology and Founder, Avasarala Technologies. He brings with him over three decades of core engineering expertise in design, manufacturing, project planning, execution and management. He has extensive international experience in the areas of strategic alliances and markets. Production plant automation has been his area of extensive expertise. He has been part of the management team which has seen Avasarala grow from scratch to a USD 50 M company.

Cherian Kuruvila
Mr Cherian Kuruvila comes with a professional career that has spanned almost 30 years years in 4 Industries. He has worked with 5 Corporates & Industry leaders in the Indian / MNC domain across product categories, sectors and locations in the Consumer durable sector, Office automation sector, Telecom sector and HR recruitment/ HR consulting

His biggest assignments have been in senior management levels in the office automation sector as Executive Director with Xerox , as CEO and Sr Vice President in Telecom sector with Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications and has also had a share of HR recruitment/ HR consulting with a $22 bn U.S based MNC called Manpower Inc.

He comes with strong Direct Sales , Retail and Channel Distribution experience along Marketing ,Operations , Profit Centre Management and aggressive start up experiences . He currently is a Business Strategy Management Consultant and Mentor focused on the Start up and SME sector to give back his learnings and experiences .

Shyamendra Narain
Shyamendra Narain has been the CEO of Tata Batteries, Magickwoods, a Canadian MNC and Franke, a Swiss MNC. Additionally, he has had leadership experience of over 20 years in MNCs and reputed Indian organisations, within India and abroad, with Castrol, BP Plc, Tata Motors, Titan Industries, Burroughs Wellcome etc.

His functional experience has been in operations, projects, sales and marketing, HR & financial management. He brings with him best business practices spanning five industries: Consumer durables, Auto & FMCG like auto ancillaries, Oil & gas, Home Improvement and Pharma.

He is currently mentoring established and start up businesses in the areas of business strategy, operational excellence and sales and marketing management. He is also the Founder and Director of takemyshipment.com, an online freight exchange.

He holds B.Tech. in Mechanical Engg from IIT Kanpur and PGDM in Marketing and Operations from IIM Bangalore. He is a specialist in P&L management, Business Strategy formulation, Marketing & Sales management, Business development, Negotiation, and Cost management.