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TEAM
K GANESH
Serial Entrepreneur, Partner – GrowthStory.in
Promoter & Founder Director – BigBasket, Portea Medical, Bluestone, HomeLane & other New
Age Tech Cos.
Ex Independent Director – Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank Limited
Director – Domestic Workers Sector Skill Council – Section 8 Company under Govt of India
Ex-Member – Board of Governors, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta
Founder Director – IIM Calcutta Innovation Park & Incubation Cell
Adjunct Professor – Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore
Visiting Faculty – Indian School of Business, Hyderabad
Ganesh is a seasoned entrepreneur with a proven track record of launching and exiting four
successful ventures. He is the founder and partner at GrowthStory.in, a leading venture builder
platform that incubates and promotes new ventures and entrepreneurs.
GrowthStory has been instrumental in the growth of several leading companies, including
BigBasket.com - India’s largest e-grocery company (majority-owned by the Tata Group), Portea
Medical - India’s largest and fastest-growing home healthcare company with over 4000 employees
across 37 cities, Bluestone.com - a top online jewellery company, and HomeLane - India’s leading
end-to-end interior design and manufacturing provider.
Ganesh’s previous ventures have also seen great success. TutorVista, his last venture, was acquired
by education leader Pearson in 2011 for $213 MM. He was also the founder and chairman of
Marketics, a data analytics BPO firm, which was acquired by WNS in 2007 for $63 MM. Additionally,
he founded CustomerAsset, a BPO/Call center pioneer, which was acquired by ICICI Bank and is now publicly listed as First Source Solutions. Ganesh’s first venture, IT&T, was one of India’s top multi-vendor IT service and support companies and was acquired by iGate in 2003.
Ganesh has served as Independent Director on the Board of Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank Ltd ( A
Banking Company under RBI ) contributing to Technology, Strategy and Audit functions.
Currently, Ganesh serves as Director of, Domestic Workers Sector Skills Council Domestic Workers
Sector Skill Council (DWSSC) is a Section 8 Not for Profit company registered under the Companies
Act, 2013 working under the aegis of the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE)
and National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC). He has been the founder Director and Board member in Bigbasket, Bluestone, Portea Medical, Homelane, and other technology companies in Grocery, Education, healthcare, Food Tech, Home infrastructure, and other sectors. He has been actively involved in guiding these companies in areas of Strategy, Fundraising, Technology, scaling, and governance.
He has served as a Member of the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta overseeing Technology, New Curriculum Design, and Infrastructure projects for the institute.
He conceptualized and set up the IIM Calcutta Innovation Park & Incubation cell and served as the
Founder Director.
Ganesh is an active angel investor and has invested in several startups, including LittleEyeLabs
(acquired by Facebook in 2014), delyver.com (acquired by BigBasket in 2015), DealShare, Oto
Capital, HackerEarth, CredR, Pokkt, SilverPush, Euler Motors, and more. He is also a mentor and
incubator to startups and has held senior management positions at Wipro/Bharti British Telecom and HCL Ltd.
Ganesh holds a postgraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta and a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Delhi University. He has received the Distinguished Alumnus award from both institutions and
As an Adjunct Professor at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, he teaches an MBA class
on “New Age Business Models” and as a Visiting Faculty at the Indian School of Business Hyderabad,
he teaches a course on “Launching Software Startups” to postgraduate management students.
Ganesh is also a well-known speaker at entrepreneurship, startup, and technology events and has been recognized as one of the "Iconic Entrepreneurs of India" by the National Knowledge
Commission and was a nominee for The Economic Times ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ award in 2015.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ganesh co-founded a social initiative to provide 65 lakh
meals to migrant and daily wage workers across five cities during March 2020. During the second
wave of the pandemic, he worked to provide free oxygen support to COVID patients and collaborated with state governments to upgrade healthcare infrastructure facilities. His non-profit Bahaar Foundation, focuses on creating micro entrepreneurs in Healthcare and Agriculture sectors.
MEENA GANESH
Co-Founder, MD & Chairperson, Portea Medical
Meena is a business leader and an entrepreneur with nearly three decades of experience in industries including healthcare, consulting, technology, outsourcing, education and ecommerce. She’s one of the best-known promoters and investors in Indian startups.
As the Co-founder, MD & Chairperson, Meena heads Portea Medical (www.portea.com), India’s largest and fastest growing home healthcare company, which she co-founded in July 2013. The company, has 4000+ employees and operations across 30+ cities in India, and brings in-home to patients, the full range of geriatric, chronic, post-operative care as well as allied healthcare services. The company is looking to expand its operations to 50+ cities by mid of 2022.
As a partner of the platform, Growthstory.in, one of India’s largest entrepreneurship platforms, she is also co-promoter of nearly a dozen, new-age Internet/ Technology enabled start-ups. A few of them that are leaders in their category include Bigbasket.com – India’s largest eGrocery company (now majority owned by the Tata Group), Bluestone.com – a leading online jewelry company, HomeLane- India’s leading end to end, vertically integrated interior design and manufacturing provider, HungerBox – India’s largest B2B foodtech platform serving over 5 lakh orders a day, Verloop.io - an AI/ML solutions provider and Home Screen Network – a vernacular digital media company.
Till February 2013, Meena was a promoter and board member of TutorVista, and CEO and MD of Pearson Education Services, acquired by Pearson, the world’s top education services company, for $213 MM in what was one of the largest deals in the Indian education sector.
Earlier, Meena set up the Tesco Hindustan Service Center, Tesco’s outsourced IT services and analytics operation in India, and served as the CEO.
Before joining Tesco‚ Meena co-founded one of India’s pioneering BPO companies - Customer Asset, which she sold to ICICI OneSource. Meena spent 5 years with Microsoft India‚ during which she set up multiple business units including Microsoft Consulting‚ Internet and Application Development/Business services units. During the initial 11 years of her career, Meena was with PricewaterhouseCoopers and with NIIT.
Meena is a PGDM holder from IIM Calcutta and has a graduate degree in Physics from the Madras University. In 2011, she was conferred the ‘Distinguished Alumnus’ award by IIM Calcutta. Meena serves on the board of Pfizer India, P&G Health & Hygiene Limited and Axis Bank. She is the founder president of Home Healthcare Association and has also been part of the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta.
During March 2020, she co-founded a Social initiative to feed migrant and daily wage workers and served 65 lakh meals over a three-month period across five cities in India under FeedMyBangalore and FeedMycity banner. In 2021, during the second wave of the pandemic, worked on providing free oxygen support to help covid patients and with the state governments to upgrade healthcare infrastructure facilities. Her non-profit Bahaar Foundation, focuses on creating micro entrepreneurs in Healthcare and Agriculture sectors.
Meena has recently been featured in the list of Top 20 Outstanding Female Business Leaders by Forbes Asia 2021. She has been part of Fortune India’s 50 'Most Powerful Women in Business' for seven consecutive years (2015 - 2021). She has also been featured on IFC WeRise: Insights from Women Business Leaders on Managing through Crisis, Resilience and Recovery in 2021 and on W PowerTrailblazer by Forbes India in 2017 to acknowledge the significant achievements being made by women across diverse sectors. She won the ET Startup Award in the Women Ahead category in 2016 and was chosen as Health Entrepreneur of the Year (2016) at the India Health Summit & Awards. She was awarded the Kempegowda Award by BBMP for contribution to the city of Bengaluru.
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VINAYAK (VIN) NARASIMHAN
Research Scientist @ Samsung Semiconductor
Venture Advisor, GrowthStory.in
Vinayak is a medical engineer and a researcher. Based out of Pasadena, California, he is currently a research scientist at Samsung working on early-stage R&D of semiconductor-based health tech platforms. Prior to this, Vinayak was a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) which ranks amongst the world’s foremost institutions of higher learning for science and technology. Here, he completed his MS and PhD degrees in Medical Engineering.
Vinayak has received numerous awards for his research both in industry and academia. At Samsung, he has been awarded a long term career incentive award and a research collaboration award. At Caltech, he was awarded the Demetriades - Tsafka - Kokkalis Prize in Biotechnology for his PhD thesis.
At GrowthStory, Vinayak supports due diligence, sourcing deals, building relationships with founders/VCs, and growing exposure to deep tech and health tech. Through GrowthStory, he has been involved in several investments made in tech-first VC funds as well as co-investments in promising deep tech startups. Vinayak is also an accredited investor on platforms such as AngelList having exposure to multiple health tech-focused syndicates and funds. Through these efforts, Vinayak is actively building his investment thesis in areas such as biotech, medical devices, and tech-driven healthcare.
AKSHITA GANESH
Director, Insights @ Reforge
Venture Advisor, GrowthStory.in
Akshita serves as a Director of the Insights Team at Reforge, a professional development and learning company. In the various roles she has held at Reforge, she has led company and audience growth strategy, business operations, setup and scaled the insights team, which builds Reforge's flagship knowledge products for product builders and growth professionals in technology.
At GrowthStory, Akshita supports deal sourcing and leverages her expertise and experience in early-stage strategy, growth and product management and operations to evaluate potential deals.
Prior to Reforge, Akshita worked at McKinsey where she defined and implemented growth strategy for D2C and enterprise clients in tech, banking, healthcare & auto in US, India and South-East Asia.
She has also held roles in data analytics and product in Zynga and SigFig.
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