About Us

Mr. Swarup is an MBA from Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University. He started his career at ACC limited, where he was responsible for corporate restructuring as well as design and implementation of comprehensive corporate planning systems. He later moved to Nestle India Limited and served for 13 distinguished years at various senior functional levels. He is widely known in the corporate world for his par excellence skills after working as the President & COO for Sun Breweries, Moscow, and then as the Executive Director, Pepsico for 5 years.

Mr. Swarup served as the Managing Director & CEO at Times Internet Limited, a Times of India Group Internet-Mobile convergence company. As a leader he provided vision, strategy and organization development for indiatimes.com, the leading portal in India and led the creation of multiple online assets, e-commerce, subscription services, and mobile/voice value-added services including timesofindia.com, economicstimes.com, Indiatimes travel, Indiatimes shopping and Indiatimes 8888- the first ever mobile media VAS initiative with all mobile operators. He also led venture capital infusion into Times Internet at record valuation by Sequoia Capital, their first investment in India.

After Times Internet, he was appointed as the Head of Brand Capital of Times of India Group where he led venture capital investments and structured finance across various businesses in growth and expansion phase. He spearheaded investments in over 150 ventures in several industries after a deep understanding of Indian business, regulatory and financial and market environment.

Mr. Swarup was the Co-Promoter, Chairman and Chief Mentor at Smile Group, focused on investing and incubating startups in the digital space with extensive holdings in the consumer internet and media space. As an industry pioneer, he helped build and scale: Quasar, acquired by WPP the world’s largest advertising agency network; Advertising network Tyroo, which was a joint venture with Yahoo! Inc and parts of it now acquired by Dentsu Aegis; Zoomtra, India’s largest travel metasearch engine; Zumtra, a travel technology application; Fashion & You, India’s pioneer flash retail company; and Deals & You. He has a proven track record not only in investing in early-stage ventures but also exits providing extraordinary returns to the promoters and investors.

He served as the President and Member of the Executive Committee of the Indian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (IVCA). Under his stewardship, IVCA became a major voice of the PE/VC industry and held close discussions with the regulators and policymakers including SEBI. He played a key role as a representative of the PE/VC industry in the formulation of the AIF regime by SEBI.  IVCA membership represents 90% of the AUM in India.

Mr. Swarup as Managing Director & Partner at Avigo Capital Advisors, managed Assets under Management (AUM) of approximately $365 million across three funds and built businesses in the growth stage and handled various investment-related issues. He was last senior advisor to Siguler Guff, a large fund of funds and a private equity fund with over $10 billion AUM.

He has also served on various Committees and task forces including that of SEBI and serves on the Board of Directors of several companies including as the Chairman of Micromax.

In a career spanning 23 years, Manish has worked with start-ups, SMEs, and well as large corporate across industry sectors as diverse as Retail, Media, Internet, Reverse Logistics and Manufacturing. He has had an illustrious career with Archies & Indiatimes.  Manish held a position as the CFO of many early-stage ventures. Manish’s enviable track record in handling IPOs on multiple occasions in the past, along with his deep networking in the investor community makes him an asset for both investors and startups. Manish is a commerce graduate and a member of The Institute of Company Secretaries of India (CS) and The Institute of Cost & Works Accountants of India (ICWA).

At Venture Gurukool, she has lead successful proprietary investments in Olly, MaxMyWealth, Sattviko, & HomeCapital to name a few and actively engages with portfolio companies to connect them with impact mentors and corporates, she also advises them continually on their forthcoming investment fundraise.

She also serves as an Independent Director on the Board of Lerthai Finance Ltd (BOM: 502250).

Ntasha’s experience ranges from financial services to the energy & resource sector. Prior to Venture Gurukool, she worked with the Indian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (IVCA), where she led the innovation initiative, exclusively geared towards early-stage ventures. She had an entrepreneurial stint while building, Indianpetrochem.com, India’s first market intelligence platform on Chemicals and petrochemical industry.

Ntasha has worked with Bloomberg New Energy Finance and ANZ Bank in the past, focusing on the energy and resources sector in India and Australia. Ntasha earned her Masters of Science in Energy and Resources Management with Distinction from University College London (UCL). She has published a thesis on the investment opportunities for new electricity generation technologies by adhering to stringent risk-return parameters for which she was bestowed with the Torrens Award by UCL for outstanding academic excellence. She is a Santos Scholar and a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Lancaster University.

She has led Financial Strategy at the Global level for Fortune 500 companies such as PepsiCo’s Frito Lay, Yum! Brands & Staples Inc. Most recently, She was at Eu Yan Sang International (EYS), Global Head Office in Singapore. A 130-year-old, company a leader in Traditional Medicine, with a few thousand products, over 300 retail outlets, 25 clinics and manufacturing facilities, and partners in multiple countries. She led strategy, business development, and new markets – to lead growth across the world. At Staples Inc. Global Head Office in Boston, USA, she led the company towards sustainable, profitable growth into a new B2B space. In addition, she led the evaluation of growth in areas, categories and identified acquisition targets. She led strategic and financial planning at Yum! Brands in Singapore for Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Hawaii, areas covering 22 country franchise and company-owned operations. With work ranging from the affordability of a meal to ensuring the success of restaurants in different markets. She also led financial strategy for PepsiCo’s Frito Lays office in India. For the newly re-established Indian business, she helped construct a “loss leader” for survival. The price of Rs 10 for a bag of chips.
Shivani started her career in India, at Ernst & Young as an Intern & Consultant, leading audit and consulting projects for large clients like Taj Hotels and HDFC, Becton Dickinson, Stryker, Boeing, Voltas, and Eicher Motors. Shivani is an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Chartered Accountant (ICAI), with a Bachelors in Commerce (Hons.) from the University of Delhi.

Mr. Sinha is a seasoned Human Resource professional and has a strong track record of maximizing ‘People leverage’ in multi-stakeholder, highly competitive environments, across diverse industries, geographies, and cultures. He accomplished this through a strategic partnership, strong leadership skills, active collaboration, engagement, and alignment. He is leveraging from his team and leadership development expertise to nurture and invest in startups.

His past experiences include various leadership roles at PepsiCo in India & Ireland for 18 years, lastly as its Director Organization and Management Development (OMD). He was the India HR Head for Encore Capital Group, a US-based blue chip financial services company. Mentoring has been his passion and he strongly believes in the power of diversity & inclusion by providing early-stage startups with his impact mentorship.

Mr. Kapur has served as a Principal Consultant at PwC India. He focuses on providing investment analytics on technology with experience in helping benchmark technology deployment. He has also worked with Lunexa, a California-based startup, and has been a part of many Business Process Reengineering projects in companies like Ford Motors, Dell, Motorola, and some power utility and pharma companies.

Mr. Kush completed his BTech from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago and his MBA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He also has a Certificate in Business Analytics from Manipal Global Education Services, Bengaluru.