OUR TEAM

 

Anand Sudarshan

Anand Sudarshan is the Founder & Director of Sylvant Advisors Private Limited. Anand is also an independent director at NIIT. Till June 2012, he was Vice-Chairman & Managing Director of MaGE, where he has had a distinguished career since May 2006.

He currently advises companies & entities in the education sector, and is also a fund advisor with TVS Capital Funds. He is active in supporting Government of India in policy formulation, and is a member of select Committees & Task Forces of the Planning Commission of India as well as the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Prior to his stint at MaGE, he was President, Adea International (a wholly owned subsidiary of Adea Solutions, Inc, Dallas TX), responsible for all global businesses of the IT Services & Solutions company.

In 1989 Anand co-founded The Microland Group and for almost 14 years he was part of the team that built it into one of the leading privately held Indian technology company’s chain.

He has a Bachelor of Engineering degree (B.S Degree) in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India, and a PGDM from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, India.

Madan Padaki

Bitten by the entrepreneurial bug in Aug 2000, he co-founded MeritTrac – as a pioneering idea in skills assessments and served as its CEO till 2011. MeritTrac is today India’s Largest Skills Assessment company and is recognized as a thought-leader in the sector, having won several awards like the NASSCOM Innovation Award & Deloitte Fast 50 India Award. MeritTrac has also been featured extensively in several books on Entrepreneurship and is also a case-study at INSEAD. MeritTrac was acquired by Manipal Global Education Services, one of India’s largest education services company in 2007 and Madan continued in various roles with Manipal Education and till recently was heading Strategy & Innovation.

Madan co-founded the Head Held High Foundation in 2008 with the vision of eradicating rural poverty through education. Head Held High trains zero/low-educated rural youth and transforms them to be knowledge workers in record times. The movement has won several awards, including the CNN IBN Real Heroes Award, 2011, Global Sourcing Council Award 2011, etc. Madan now serves as the Co-founder and CEO of Head Held High Services Pvt. Ltd., a social enterprise delivering on the vision of the Foundation.

Madan is active in many forums globally and serves on the Governing Council of TiE Bangalore and on the Board of Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, Karnataka

Prashanth (PV) Boccasam

Prashanth Vishwanath Boccasam(PV) founded Approva Corporation in 2002 and serves as its Chairman, President and Chief Strategist. PV serves as a General Partner at Novak Biddle Venture Partners. Previously, he was a Venture Partner at the firm. PV is also donning the role of the Chief Executive Officer at Orchestro. He served as Chief Executive Officer of Approva Corporation from 2001 to 2008. He has over 20 years of operational and executive management experience.

PV was an investor and Co-Founder of ClearStandards. He co-founded Entevo Corporation in 1996 and served as its President and Chief Technology Officer from 1996 to 2000. PV served at Microsoft Corporation's Systems Division and in Worldwide Consulting Groups (MCS) as a Director for several years, developing and managing projects.

He serves as an active Board Member of TiE-DC and serves as the Chairperson of Pratham-DC. He is also an investor and Advisor in Communikids. He was selected as a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for three consecutive years (2006, 2007, and 2008) for the Greater Washington region.

He is also a Fellow at University of Maryland Smith Business School. He has a B.S. and an M.S. Degree in Computer Science from the University of Pune (India) and the University of Cincinnati respectively, and is a Graduate of the Executive Management Program at MIT Sloan School.

Gaurav Singh

Gaurav combines over 6 years of professional experience spread across IT, education and ed-tech sectors. Gaurav worked with Manipal Education and was the project manager for launch of Manipal International University (MIU) in Malaysia. He has also worked with Oracle Corporation in Hyderabad.

Gaurav earned his B.E. from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra and MBA from NarseeMonjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai
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