Meet the 10 Mentors of Starfleet India’s Boot Camp — the Genesis Week
With Starfleet India’s Accelerator, our vision is to bring together early-stage startups that can leverage blockchain technology, and give them a chance to learn how they can scale up in the fast-paced, dynamic environment that blockchain technology is. With several enterprises out there riding on the hype, startups that are doing meaningful work can be shuffled back into the vast deck of cards that make up the startup environment in the blockchain landscape.
Keeping in mind these factors, we worked with the AE Ventures team to bring together a group of individuals who have the acumen and the expertise to facilitate a great learning experience for the qualifying startups during the Genesis Week.
Here are 10 individuals who will join Starfleet India for the seven-day-long boot camp that will take place between 2 and 8 March.
Ravi Vyas — Serial Entrepreneur and Product Expert
Ravi Vyas is a serial entrepreneur with a penchant for scaling early-stage startups. He has worked on building and perfecting remarkable products. He was the CPO of YourStory — one of India’s leading publications that tell startup stories. For the past ten years, he has held roles that stretch between sales to software development in multiple startups. Presently, Ravi Vyas is the CEO and Co-founder of NextStep — a lead nurturing platform for businesses.
He will be conducting a workshop on the lean startup methodology. This method serves the purpose of helping early-stage startups make the most of small teams with limited resources make the most of it to successfully achieve their goals. This methodology can be achieved with a three-fold process: business-hypothesis-driven experimentation, iterative product releases and validated learning.
Srinath V — Startup Person & Master Business Strategist
Srinath V is a veteran in the startup realm who brings in a mix of executive and entrepreneurial experience. His acumen for building business strategies is spread across product management (B2B and B2C), product marketing, building market-entry & go-to-market strategies, digital marketing, user experience, investment proposals & pitching. He has held leadership roles at Nokia, MapmyIndia & Motorola where he led product & marketing teams across multiple sites and countries among other operations.
Srinath will conduct a workshop on value proposition design and customer design at the Starfleet India Genesis Week. His workshop will help the participants learn to significantly increase the quality of their products based on tried and tested methods. And a great product doesn’t succeed when it is developed as a software or as a service, but when it reaches the right people whose problems it can solve. Srinath’s workshops will enable startups to build on their value proposition and create strategies that will take their products to the market.
Shivhari Shankar — Ace Product Developer and BD Expert
Shivhari Shankar is the VP of Product at one of India’s leading blockchain startups — Springrole. He is a seasoned professional with an expertise in product development and management. Prior to Springrole, he worked in several roles in companies like Cisco and Guru-G Learning Labs. Presently, he is working on scaling a blockchain-powered attestation protocol for verifying professional profiles at Springrole.
Shivhari’s workshop will focus on building business models for blockchain. Sure, rolling out a minimum viable product (MVP) and focusing on its development is a crucial task given that building on blockchain technology is not an easy task. However, having robust business models will shape the way your startup survives in the long run. Shivhari will highlight what participants need to do to build this aspect of their startups and create a wholesome business unit — as a product and as a team.
Anand Hariharan — Product Pundit and Startup Wiz
Anand Hariharan is an experienced product management professional with a demonstrated history of working in the computer software industry. With over 14 years of experience, he has gathered a skillset that is spread across product management, strategic consulting, market-entry, and business requirements. He has a well-rounded understanding of scaling startups and building developer communities.
At the Starfleet India Genesis Week, Anand will conduct a series of workshops on product development. His workshop will help the participating startups create product strategies that will help them materialise a solution to the problem, build solutions based on their audience, create workable timeframes, and strategies for the long term.
Prashanth Swaminathan — Pro Investment Banker and Crypto Advocate
Prashanth is an expert in structured finance and a capable engineer, who takes the reins of running Tandem — P2P mobile app that facilitates BTC/crypto trading. He is an engineering graduate from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati and holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. As a veteran investment banker, Prashanth has over a decade of experience in the field and last held the position of Executive Director at Morgan Stanley, London. He is also a columnist for CNBCTV18 for all things crypto and blockchain.
Raising funds is the most significant aspect of starting-up. With the growing need for support in terms of capital, blockchain startups need to learn to pitch to investors to help them get on their feet. Prashanth will be conducting a workshop on raising investment and finding funding during the Starfleet India Genesis Week.
Swati Biswas — Finance Pro and Ops Expert
Swati Biswas is a chartered accountant with over 18 years of experience from working across a mix of industry verticals. She has experience leading finance teams for multiple businesses and MNCs across multiple geographies. In her line of work, she built an acumen in financial planning, financial operations, credit control and funds management. Apart from these areas, Swati Biswas also has an astute understanding of conducting feasibility studies for all investments and post-investment returns analytics.
Swati Biswas will be conducting a workshop on one of the most important operational aspects of running a startup — budgeting. With the inflow of funds, startups need to be able to allocate funds efficiently including capital expenditures, operational expenses, taxes, etc. Swati, with her adept know-how of the subject, will enable startups to build strategies and execution plans with respect to budgeting.
Ajay Chakravarthy — Investment Ace and Pro Marketer
Ajay Chakravarthy is a seasoned professional with expertise in the fields of marketing, investments, and business development. With over 12 years of experience, Ajay has built and acumen for executing and creating strategies to scale businesses from the ground up. Ajay has led India’s largest ICO with Nucleus Vision and has also worked large scale conglomerates like IDG Media and Max New York, as well as startups like Webenza and NowFloats. Presently, he is a partner at Stargate — a boutique investment firm that supports emerging technology companies.
For early-stage startups, we cannot stress anymore on the importance of raising funds and pitching to investors. Ajay will be conducting a workshop on “Pitching your startup the right way” and individual training sessions with the participants on pitching to investors at the Starfleet India Genesis Week.
Raghu Mohan — Marketing Guru and Investment Ace
Raghu Mohan — CEO of IBC Media, is a startup person with a vast understanding of building emerging tech ecosystems. He has over ten years of experience working as a marketer, with a tech background, in several notable brands. He was part of the early teams in startups like HackerEarth and YourStory — two leading brands that are enabling India’s startup and developer communities to grow. He also worked with Udacity — a leading ed-tech non-profit, as a Growth Manager, and as the Head of Sales and Marketing at It’sBlockchain — a media publication for blockchain specific news. Presently, he is working with his team at IBC Media to enable collaborations between innovators and those who are seeking solutions in the tech industry.
Raghu will be working along with Ajay to conduct the workshop on pitching the right way with Ajay Chakravarthy.
Valentin Alexiev — Blockchain Expert and Startup Wiz
Blockchain and crypto are Valentin’s passion since the early years of Bitcoin when only some crazy people believed in it. He is a long time apps architect and software developer. Valentin is inspired by the vision of blockchain society and is interested in finding use cases to apply this novel technology towards this vision. In addition to this, he has worked with several startups who signed up for the previous three volumes of Starfleet.
He will be conducting an array of workshops during the Genesis Week which includes introducing the startups to the æternity environment, and setting up and managing projects. This will help startups strategise, execute and manage projects successfully.
Milen Radkov — Blockchain Developer Extraordinaire and Startup Wiz
Milen Radkov is a blockchain developer and enthusiast, software engineer and entrepreneur. He is a founder of several software companies, the most successful of which is hack — Blockchain & DLT Solutions. Since the beginning of 2019, he is also part of the European Commission Blockchain Experts representing Bulgaria. He is an Ambassador for Gitcoin — Ethereum based decentralised platform for software engineering gigs and technology advisor for the WeiDex. He is also an objective Lead for the Wetonomy project @ Comrade Cooperative and lead developer at Waellet.
He will be conducting workshops on how the participating startups can build on the æternity blockchain with Erlang and Sophia for the deployment of smart contracts as well. Startups can learn to build their products, specifically based on their use cases, with Milen’s help.
Come together!
With all our mentors in place, we’re excited to begin Genesis Week on 2 March. The seven-day boot camp is equipped to bring together a group of exceptional people who will work on building their projects into full-fledged startups that can be taken to market. We’re sure that the learning experience is going to be an immense one for those participating.
