Mentors
Prof. Rakesh Basant
Professor of Economics and Chairperson, Center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM, Ahmedabad. Current teaching and research interests focus on public policy & regulation. Recent work has focused on competition policy, inter-organizational linkages for technology development (especially academia-industry relationships), strategic and policy aspects of intellectual property rights, linkages between public policy and technological change, industrial clusters, economics of strategy and the small scale sector in India. Sectoral focus of research has been on Pharmaceutical, IT, Electronics and Auto-component industries. Has been a recipient of the of the Ford Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Economics and has spent two years at the Economic Growth Center, Yale University, USA as a Visiting Research Fellow. He has also worked as a consultant to several international organizations. Was a member of the Indian Prime Minister’s High-Level Committee (also known as Sachar Committee) to write a report on the Social, Economic and Educational Conditions of Muslims in India.
Kunal Upadhyay
Kunal Upadhyay spearheads CIIE’s endeavor towards identifying and promoting innovative ideas and creating a robust ecosystem for commercialization of high-tech innovations through partnership with government agencies, corporations, industry associations, VCs and research labs. Kunal has a deep interest in web and cleantech domain and has been instrumental in developing partnerships and launching several new initiatives at CIIE including the Renewable Energy Tech Innovation Program with Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE – Govt. of India), Imagine Cup with Microsoft, Piramal Prize for Healthcare with Piramal Foundation among others. He has played a vital role in mentoring and raising funds for various start-ups incubated at CIIE apart from leading investment in VMukti, ANTS, Whirlbird, Picporta and Biosense.He is currently setting up a Clean Energy Incubation Fund at CIIE in collaboration with a large multi-national oil company. Prior to joining CIIE, Kunal worked as an internal consultant across continents for Citigroup on projects including strategic cost management and operational re-engineering and later in American Express on restructuring operations and carrying out a feasibility study of starting operations in China. is an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and B.Tech from IIT Madras.
Pranay Gupta
Pranay is an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and a BTech & MTech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi. In his current role as the Joint CEO of Center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM Ahmedabad, he plays an active role in the field of Entrepreneurship and Strategy. He is leading the iAccelerator program which has already seen more than 12 companies starting up and has become an instrumental part of early stage venture support in the internet and mobile domain in India. Previously, he has worked with Lehman Brothers and Nomura, leading Investment Banks and helped them set up their India equity practice. While a student at IIMA, he was the Coordinator of the Entrepreneurship Club and later also supported setting up a customized merchandise designing portal targeting the educational institute segment. Previously, he has also worked with a variety of promoters involved in data analysis, luxury adventure tourism and educational magazine. He is passionate about helping startups grow to a commercial scale and, as a part of CIIE, is actively involved in scouting for innovations and working along with entrepreneurs. ICT, Clean Energy and healthcare technologies are his primary areas of interest.
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