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Board of Advisors

Venture Center has the valuable support of a Board of Advisors, whose members include:

Shai Vyakarnam, Cambridge

Dr. Shailendra Vyakarnam

Dr. Shailendra Vyakarnam started his working career in small companies, leaving to complete his MBA and PhD at Cranfield School of Management, where he stayed on the faculty for ten years, before taking up a Chair in Enterprise at Nottingham Business School. In April 2001 he was appointed Teaching Programme Director at the University of Cambridge Entrepreneurship Centre and has been made a Senior Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. He is presently the Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at the University of Cambridge and Visiting Professor at Nottingham Business School and University of Reading. He has published several books and journal articles and is on the editorial board of two academic journals.

R R Abhyankar, DSIR

Mr. R. R. Abhyankar

Shri R R Abhyankar is a Pune-ite and a champion of individual innovators, technopreneurs and industrial research. He retired in as the Head of RDI and TPDU at Department of Scientific Industrial Research (DSIR), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. Currently, he serves as an international consultant for government organizations on scientific and industrial research programs. The DSIR is the Government of India arm that aims to promote research and technology development by individual innovators, technology start-ups as well as large companies. The DSIR runs several activities to promote/support industrial research including a program of grant/loan support for technology entrepreneurs and official recognition of R&D centers of companies.

Harish Gandhi

Mr. Harish Gandhi

Harish Gandhi is currently Director at AIF Capital -- a private equity firm. Previously he was an Executive Director at Canaan Partners, a global venture capital company focusing on early stage investments in the technology, telecom and services sector in India. Harish is a recognized thought leader in the international telecommunications sector and has over 15 years of industry and operating experience in both India and the U.S. Prior to joining Canaan, Harish spent 12 years in the U.S. in various engineering, product marketing and business development roles – and has spent the past few years guiding the strategic development of next-generation services at some the world’s largest mobile companies.

 Nehal Bhojak

Ms. Nehal Bhojak

Ms. Nehal Bhojak is currently Director, Strategic Life Science Initiatives at Idea Foundry which is an economic development organization based in the U.S. that invests in and provides crucial business development assistance to early stage innovations. In this role, she has been deeply involved in all aspects of technology commercialization including technology transfer, licensing, company formation and strategy related to taking early stage companies to the next level. Prior to Idea Foundry, Ms. Bhojak held positions as Senior Consultant at i2 Technologies and Whittman-Hart in the areas of technology strategy and management.
Ms. Bhojak holds a Masters from the Heinz College of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. She also holds a Master of Science in Architecture degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her undergraduate education in Architecture and Design was completed in Mumbai, India.