Relevant Experience – Entrepreneurship & Startups

2006-2008: Chief Organiser, Proto.in

Proto.in was India’s leading showcase event for Product Startups; 8 events over 5 different cities in India where 15 of the hottest start-ups were given a stage in front of investors and entrepreneurs. Sponsored by Sequoia Capital and AWS

2008-2012: Founder and Producer, Starting Up, ETNOW

Founded India’s first TV show for start-ups and venture capital. Featured over 500 start-ups on the show and the world’s leading entrepreneurs and VC’s including Steve Jurvetson (DFJ Ventures), Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail), Vinod Khosla (Khosla Ventures), Naveen Tewari (Inmobi) and Sachin Bansal (Flipkart). Built a TV audience of over 1m people with over 50 start-ups raising over $50m via the TV program over 4 years (Link to the show here). Also wrote over 45 stories on entrepreneurship for the Economic Times; India’s most well read financial newspaper – link to the articles here

2013: MBA from INSEAD (France, Singapore)

2015-2019: Co-Founder and CEO, BookMyShow Indonesia, Jakarta

Co-founded BookMyShow in Indonesia; a Cinema and Event ticketing platform. Grew the business to over $10m revenue in 3 year period also raising $6m from Jungle Ventures. Grew a 50 member team and became the no.2 player in Indonesia in a short period of time

2019-2021: Founder and CEO, BookMyShow, Middle East

Set up and led the expansion of BookMyShow into the Middle East. Struck a $3m deal with the Coca-Cola Arena to become the Official ticketing partner and built an Events ticketing and promotion business with revenues of over $6m. Grew a 30 member team that also expanded to KSA and set up business in Riyadh

2021-2023: Chief Business Officer, Lenskart Middle East

Founded Lenskart in the Middle East in March 2021; grew out Softbank funded $4.5b valued Lenskart in the Middle East opening 8 stores in year 1; growing a 60 member team and building a leading Omnichannel – Offline and online business in the UAE. Built the brand, set up logistics, customer experience, merchandise and partnerships – all leading to business growing to $4m in year 1 become the no.1 D2C eyewear brand in the UAE in record time. Won the ‘New Market Entrant of the year’ award conferred by the India Global Forum and the Ministry of External Affairs; Indian government

2023 – Present: Founder and CEO, Startify

Now building Startify, a start-up platform for the Middle East with a mission to help accelerate start-ups and grow them in the region. With a focus on D2C to begin with; Startify is a Go-To-Market Accelerator which helps start-ups grow through a variety of solutions including Set-up, Positioning, Customer Acquisition, Business Development and Fundraising. Vision is to layer this with a media and event platform and finally a venture fund to grow and develop start-ups in the Middle East