Experience

VenEx

• India
• Technology, Information and Internet
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Co-founder

  • Jul 2020 - Present

  New Delhi, Delhi, India VenEx is creating solutions in the space of employee compensation and incentives. We are constantly looking for high-value problems in the space to solve for. Our existing product helps businesses boost capital-efficient growth and team alignment via our new-age compensation model & SaaS platform. For more on that, check out: https://www.GetVenEx.com I'm reachable at avi@GetVenEx.com, or on WhatsApp at https://wa.me/919899003393.



Multiple High-growth/ High-potential Ventures

• Advisor

  • Jan 2020 - Present

  India Advising early-stage and growth-stage ventures, especially high-potential founders & teams solving real problems on a large scale.



Eko

• India
• Financial Services
• 100 - 200 Employee

• Advisory Board Member

  • Sep 2016 - Present

  Gurgaon, India Here's a good summary of the first 8 years of Eko's journey, 5 of which I was fortunate to be a part of leading: "https://inc42.com/buzz/eko-startup-story" There is no venture that I've enjoyed as much as I've enjoyed Eko. And that Piyush, my Co-founder @RouteGuru, was also there - was a cherry on top. I'm so glad that - when Spice Mobility's MD had asked me in my resignation interview, "Can we do something so that you stay?" - with all humility, I'd said, "Nothing material… Show more Here's a good summary of the first 8 years of Eko's journey, 5 of which I was fortunate to be a part of leading: "https://inc42.com/buzz/eko-startup-story" There is no venture that I've enjoyed as much as I've enjoyed Eko. And that Piyush, my Co-founder @RouteGuru, was also there - was a cherry on top. I'm so glad that - when Spice Mobility's MD had asked me in my resignation interview, "Can we do something so that you stay?" - with all humility, I'd said, "Nothing material, Sam." Had I got tempted, I would have missed Eko. There's no greater joy professionally than to see that some of the seeds one had sown at such a beautiful venture are finally bearing fruits. Fortunate to be still involved with Abhishek, Abhinav and the team in shaping Eko's journey forward whenever we get the opportunity to sync up.

• Sr. Vice President, Key Partnerships & Projects

  • Apr 2015 - Sep 2016

  Gurgaon, India Eko is a pioneer in Digital Payments, FinTech & Retail Financial Services in India. Its disruptive tech & business model created an entire industry of branchless banking & financial services in India. Avinash's key wins in this role: 1. Launched PPI (Wallet) based remittance product & business. Led the program including strategy, winning the license from RBI, forging key partnerships, platform integrations and India-wide rollout of the product. Within a year, the PPI business… Show more Eko is a pioneer in Digital Payments, FinTech & Retail Financial Services in India. Its disruptive tech & business model created an entire industry of branchless banking & financial services in India. Avinash's key wins in this role: 1. Launched PPI (Wallet) based remittance product & business. Led the program including strategy, winning the license from RBI, forging key partnerships, platform integrations and India-wide rollout of the product. Within a year, the PPI business was accounting for over 70% of the company's Gross Transaction Value and 80% of Gross Profits. 2. Created partnership strategy and forged & nurtured key partnerships like NPCI, Escrow Bank, UIDAI, Pine Labs etc. for scaling the business further. 3. Paved the way for Eko to be able to innovate & grow independently, vis-a-vis being a Business Correspondent (agent) to banks.

• Sr. Vice President, Head - Platform & Partnerships

  • Apr 2014 - Mar 2015

  Gurgaon, India Led the strategy and P&L for the cloud business and new products. Avinash's key wins in this role: 1. Applied for, chased and won the license from RBI to operate a Semi-closed Wallet i.e. Prepaid Payment Instrument (PPI). This eliminated the company's dependency on banks as well as improved the topline for its core business by ~35%. 2. Led key partnerships and plumbing with National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and Escrow Bank for launching the Wallet-based… Show more Led the strategy and P&L for the cloud business and new products. Avinash's key wins in this role: 1. Applied for, chased and won the license from RBI to operate a Semi-closed Wallet i.e. Prepaid Payment Instrument (PPI). This eliminated the company's dependency on banks as well as improved the topline for its core business by ~35%. 2. Led key partnerships and plumbing with National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and Escrow Bank for launching the Wallet-based remittance business. 3. Formed the strategy to apply - Eko's technology for secure banking & payments on the feature phones - to enable: a. Secure, seamless payments on smartphones, social media feed and chat interfaces (arguably better than the prevalent OTP-based so-called 2nd factor authentication solutions) b. Secure, cardless withdrawals from ATMs. c. For building a universal solution to significantly reduce the overall risk of fraud in the digital transaction ecosystem across cards / wallets / net banking / mobile banking / ATMs / Business Correspondents / UPI and more. d. For building a universal solution to the problem of managing passwords / PINs. The solution still has the potential to significantly reduce the overall risk of identity theft in the cyber world. 4. Sowed the seeds of the API and Widgets business, which has since become the largest business and growth-driver for Eko.

• Sr. Vice President, Strategic Program Management

  • Mar 2013 - Mar 2014

  Gurgaon, India Led company-wide programs towards achieving key strategic goals. Avinash's key wins in this role: 1. Cashflow Break-even by leading a concerted cross-functional program. 2. Led the strategy and application to RBI for operating Prepaid Payment Instruments i.e. PPI (Wallets). After winning the license, this became the backbone of Eko's independence from principal banks, accelerated business growth & product innovations, resulted in a happier team and boosted… Show more Led company-wide programs towards achieving key strategic goals. Avinash's key wins in this role: 1. Cashflow Break-even by leading a concerted cross-functional program. 2. Led the strategy and application to RBI for operating Prepaid Payment Instruments i.e. PPI (Wallets). After winning the license, this became the backbone of Eko's independence from principal banks, accelerated business growth & product innovations, resulted in a happier team and boosted investor-confidence. The Wallet business started contributing over 80% of Eko's Gross Profits within a year. 3. Led the new product (direct-to-consumer app) strategy. It resulted to prototyping two potentially powerful fintech products: pinTwin (based on a patent co-authored by Avinash) and FundU.

• Sr. Vice President, Head - Sales & Distribution

  • Jan 2012 - Feb 2013

  New Delhi Area, India Was responsible for scaling the company's retail distribution network to the next level. Avinash's key wins in this role: 1. Expanded the retail network from Delhi-NCR and Bihar to Mumbai, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Kanpur, Ludhiana, Jaipur and Bhiwadi. 2. Avinash did this while right-sizing the Sales & Distribution team - by evolving the distribution model from a fixed-cost based circle-office model to a lean and variable-cost based model.

• Sr. Vice President, Systems & Planning

  • Jan 2011 - Dec 2011

  New Delhi Area, India In this role, Avinash led the cross-functional endeavor to create a framework of processes and systems for massive scale in operations. He engaged consulting organizations like MicroSave to help him achieve this objective. Avinash's key achievements in this role: Created the super-franchisee model for lean and agile scaling of operations. In the next year, he would apply this framework & model to scale the retail network from 2 circles to 7 circles while right-sizing the S&D… Show more In this role, Avinash led the cross-functional endeavor to create a framework of processes and systems for massive scale in operations. He engaged consulting organizations like MicroSave to help him achieve this objective. Avinash's key achievements in this role: Created the super-franchisee model for lean and agile scaling of operations. In the next year, he would apply this framework & model to scale the retail network from 2 circles to 7 circles while right-sizing the S&D team and reducing the fixed operational costs.



Dexter Capital Advisors

• Investment Banking
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Partner

  • Mar 2020 - Jun 2020

  New Delhi, Delhi Dexter Capital is a boutique investment bank, consistently ranked by Venture Intelligence among the Top 10 Investment Banks in overall PE / VC category by deal volume. Avinash's interest area was to work closely with and enable brilliant founders and their high-potential early-stage ventures in tech / tech-enabled sectors - with capital & advisory. Avinash introduced and won two fresh mandates (equity fund-raise for an AI/ML-powered SaaS venture and debt fund-raise for an… Show more Dexter Capital is a boutique investment bank, consistently ranked by Venture Intelligence among the Top 10 Investment Banks in overall PE / VC category by deal volume. Avinash's interest area was to work closely with and enable brilliant founders and their high-potential early-stage ventures in tech / tech-enabled sectors - with capital & advisory. Avinash introduced and won two fresh mandates (equity fund-raise for an AI/ML-powered SaaS venture and debt fund-raise for an education company), and won a 3rd mandate (equity fund-raise for a consumer mobility venture). He led execution (deal-marketing) for two of these; led execution for a 4th mandate (debt for a healthcare/diagnostics chain); and co-led execution for a 5th one (a content studio venture). Apart from this, Avinash advised about two dozen promising startups in the process of evaluating them for potential mandates. Show less



Times Internet

• India
• Technology, Information and Internet
• 700 & Above Employee

• VP | Corporate Partnerships (TIL)

  • Apr 2019 - Jan 2020

  New Delhi Area, India Avinash initiated/formed key alliances enabling large consumer-market enterprises, including card networks, banks, fintech players, airlines, telcos etc., enhancing their products / engagement / customer-loyalty / revenue, by "contextually" leveraging Times Internet's market-leading digital content and product assets across domains

• Vice President

  • Sep 2016 - Jan 2020

  New Delhi Area, India Avinash was a member of the senior leadership team at Times Internet Limited (TIL). Note: For his key achievements at TIL, please refer to the following sections. This particular section is about TIL. TIL is India's largest digital (Consumer Internet) company, informing, entertaining and enabling almost the entire online population in India, through a variety of market-leading digital businesses across News, Business News, Lifestyle News & Content, Video / OTT, Music… Show more Avinash was a member of the senior leadership team at Times Internet Limited (TIL). Note: For his key achievements at TIL, please refer to the following sections. This particular section is about TIL. TIL is India's largest digital (Consumer Internet) company, informing, entertaining and enabling almost the entire online population in India, through a variety of market-leading digital businesses across News, Business News, Lifestyle News & Content, Video / OTT, Music, Hospitality, Games, Deals & Offers, Education, Real Estate, Financial Services, E-commerce and more. We operate over 40 market-leading businesses e.g. TimesOfIndia.com, EconomicTimes.com & ET Prime, NavBharatTimes.com (& other language news apps), Newspoint, Indiatimes, MensXP, iDiva, Dineout, Gaana, CricBuzz, CricPlay, BaaziNow, Gradeup, MagicBricks, ET Money, ET Insure, MX Player, GetMeAShop, Times Prime, Times Points, Times Jobs, Colombia Audience Network and more. Additionally, through TVentures, we invest into other high-growth / high-potential digital businesses. Some of our past / current investments include BYJU's, Delhivery, Haptik, MPL, Myra, Pratilipi, Shuttl, Spoyl and Vidooly. Last but not the least, through Times Bridge, we invest into Indian arms of big & bold businesses from across the world and empower them with end-to-end solutions and expertise to realize the India opportunity. Some of the global ventures we have enabled in India are Airbnb, CourseEra, Uber, Vice, Houzz, Mubi, Smule, AdAge, BI, PC Mag, South China Morning Post, The Weather Channel, Thrive and more. TIL has grown from strength to strength, becoming the world's largest Premium Digital Publisher, reaching over half a billion users every month (as of March 2019). It is a part of Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd. (BCCL), popularly known as The Times Group, India's largest media and entertainment group.

• VP | COO (Times Cards & Communities)

  • Sep 2016 - Mar 2019

  Gurgaon, India Avinash carried full responsibilty of 5 SME business P&Ls in TIL portfolio. In this role, his key wins included: a. 5X growth in all key metrics in 2 years in the 5-year-old Co-branded Cards business (Times Cards) b. Avinash had additionally inherited iTimes, Brandwire, Astrospeak and The Speaking Tree. These businesses were 3-18 years old and fledging. In resonance with all stakeholders, he consolidated these businesses with/into larger BUs within TIL, thereby creating… Show more Avinash carried full responsibilty of 5 SME business P&Ls in TIL portfolio. In this role, his key wins included: a. 5X growth in all key metrics in 2 years in the 5-year-old Co-branded Cards business (Times Cards) b. Avinash had additionally inherited iTimes, Brandwire, Astrospeak and The Speaking Tree. These businesses were 3-18 years old and fledging. In resonance with all stakeholders, he consolidated these businesses with/into larger BUs within TIL, thereby creating greater efficiencies as well as career growth opportunities for the team.



Gradeup (Gradestack Learning Pvt Ltd)

• India
• Education Administration Programs
• 400 - 500 Employee

• Board Member

  • Feb 2017 - Jan 2020

  New Delhi Area, India



Spice Labs

• India
• Software Development
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Vice President - Enterprise Mobility

  • Jan 2010 - Jan 2011

  Noida, India Avinash & team set up the Enterprise Mobility business. Avinash was responsible for the business unit, including product management, engineering, forging & leading alliances, creating & leading joint go-to-market plans with channel partners, driving sales, managing deployments, ensuring delivery and appropriate customer support. Avinash's key wins in this role: 1. From scratch, built & deployed ERP mobility solutions to over 1,000 happy enterprise users (employees of… Show more Avinash & team set up the Enterprise Mobility business. Avinash was responsible for the business unit, including product management, engineering, forging & leading alliances, creating & leading joint go-to-market plans with channel partners, driving sales, managing deployments, ensuring delivery and appropriate customer support. Avinash's key wins in this role: 1. From scratch, built & deployed ERP mobility solutions to over 1,000 happy enterprise users (employees of clients). 2. Led the creation of core IP and competitive advantage in Enterprise Mobility Middleware (EMM) and SAP mobility product portfolio from scratch. 3. Forged & led alliances with leading Systems Integrators; and with Blackberry, a leading smartphone brand then, esp. in the enterprise segment. 4. Won the first 2 customers, each of which was a billion+ USD revenue enterprise, one in India and other one in Malaysia. 5. Successfully laid the foundation of this new business, motivating Spice Mobility group - which is otherwise a Consumer Mobility business - to seriously consider Enterprise Mobility in its growth strategy then. Show less



RouteGuru | Navolve Technologies Private Limited (Delhi, India)

• Co-founder, CEO

  • Feb 2006 - Dec 2009

  New Delhi, India Founded RouteGuru with the vision to make maps & related services accessible, usable & valuable to consumers & businesses in developing countries (yes, that wasn't the case then 🙂) RouteGuru became the world's 1st product that provided landmark-intelligent driving directions (as was necessary in India & similar markets vis-a-vis street-name based directions in the western world), using a patent-filed method created by Avinash & the core algorithm coded by him in #Postgresql and C++… Show more Founded RouteGuru with the vision to make maps & related services accessible, usable & valuable to consumers & businesses in developing countries (yes, that wasn't the case then 🙂) RouteGuru became the world's 1st product that provided landmark-intelligent driving directions (as was necessary in India & similar markets vis-a-vis street-name based directions in the western world), using a patent-filed method created by Avinash & the core algorithm coded by him in #Postgresql and C++ (knock knock, anybody remember this stack?) RouteGuru was also the 1st Indian venture to have elegantly leveraged Ajax for giving a we-search-while-you-type UX when searching for locations; and also meta-search / phonetic-search concepts We used to very proactively contribute to Delhi's startup ecosystem too Received 2 in-principle acquisition offers, but a bit too early in the venture: One pre-launch and the 2nd one within 6 months of launch This was an era before Redbus, Flipkart, Ola, Paytm, OYO etc., when startup investors were far & few Our innovative approach was copied by "big tech", which is around the time we lost steam Key learnings: 1. Entrepreneurship is about selling more than innovation. Selling to form a team, retain a team, raise capital, get user-adoption, even selling to vendors to get a "much better" price 2. The power of saying NEED YOUR HELP. Humans don't respond to our commands like computers do. 3. Missed an understanding of Digital Marketing, which I would later acquire through a stint at Times Internet (2016-2019) 4. When a big entity calls upon you, don't hesitate from being a shrewd businessman. You would be respected more, and would create better value for you & your shareholders 5. Ironically, but for good reason, funding / M&A interests come when you don't need them, and they are tough to come by when you desperately need one. Wisdom is in judging the right time between the two 6. Team... is everything 7. And many more such invaluable lessons Show less



Manchitra Services Private Limited (Delhi, India)

• Products Manager

  • Sep 2002 - Jan 2006

  New Delhi Area, India Avinash led the product management, engineering & support for WFMS, a then-cutting-edge, GIS-based mobile workforce management solution, a product that he & his team built from scratch. WFMS started contributing over 90% of the company's revenue and brought the company to profitability. Once the product was ready, Avinash led India-wide deployment of WFMS for Airtel Broadband, including change management in the Airtel org. WFMS was later acquired by Israel-based Click… Show more Avinash led the product management, engineering & support for WFMS, a then-cutting-edge, GIS-based mobile workforce management solution, a product that he & his team built from scratch. WFMS started contributing over 90% of the company's revenue and brought the company to profitability. Once the product was ready, Avinash led India-wide deployment of WFMS for Airtel Broadband, including change management in the Airtel org. WFMS was later acquired by Israel-based Click Software, one of the global leaders in the space. Click Software has since been acquired by Salesforce.com. Avinash also created a consumer-facing web-GIS solution for the travel portal eBookers.com, one of the largest online travel agencies (OTAs) in UK at that time. He was additionally instrumental in creating a formal HR function and Customer Support processes. Show less



Rolls Royce Engine Services - Oakland (California, USA)

• Programmer & Analyst

  • Jun 2001 - Mar 2002

  San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA Managed and evolved the in-house software (AIRS) on which the company ran its technical operations. AIRS was powered by ObjectStore ODBMS.



eXcelon Corporation, earlier Object Design, Inc. (San Mateo, California, USA)

• Consulting Software Engineer

  • Feb 2001 - May 2001

  San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA Trained on building solutions on ObjectStore, then market-leading Object-oriented Database Management System (ODBMS).



01 Systems WLL (Bahrain)

• Consulting Software Engineer

  • Sep 1998 - Aug 2000

  Bahrain Participated in creating bilingual solutions for Signature Capture and Document Management for the Arabic banking industry.



GeometricPLM

• IT Services and IT Consulting
• 700 & Above Employee

• Software Engineer

  • Jul 1997 - Sep 1998

  Pune Area, India Developed CAD / CAM / PLM software for market-leading clients. Managed a project for a Japanese client.