Presenting company selection committee

About the presenting company selection committee

Cleantech Group appoints an independent selection committee to select which companies will present at its Cleantech Forums.

Company applications are reviewed by the industry experts below. This selection panel has exclusive control over which companies are offered presentation spots and which are not. The names of selected companies are not shared until the event itself.

Some promising companies sometimes go unselected. Selection is dependent on many factors, such as the number of applicants, the quality of the submitted application, the strength of the business opportunity, timing, investor preferences, management experience, etc.

Arjun Gupta
Telesoft Partners

Arjun Gupta is the Managing Partner and Founder of TeleSoft Partners, an international venture capital firm focused on high-tech and clean-tech companies. Over the last fifteen years, he has overseen investing in and helping build ~61 private companies, resulting in ~32 acquisitions and IPOs to date. At TeleSoft, Arjun manages capital commitments of $625+ million and has established Corporate Partnerships with Alltel, Bechtel, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Comverse in the US, Europe and Israel. He is a Director of Calient, Education.com, Knowledge Advenure, LiteScape, LogLogic, Nexant, Sofa and Validity Sensors. Arjun is also on the boards of the Aspen Institute, Stanford Business School Management Board, India America Council, Aspen India, Friends of New Orleans and the East Africa Leadership Foundation. Earlier in his career, he was a management consultant for high-tech clients at McKinsey, and a software engineer with Tektronix. Arjun is a Henry Crown Fellow, received a BA (Honors) in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, MS and BS, Phi Beta Kappa, in Computer Science from WSU, and MBA from Stanford. Arjun is an outdoor enthusiast and enjoys hiking, skiing and scuba diving. He has climbed with six Himalayan expeditions to peaks over 20,000 feet, and was awarded the Grindlay’s Bank Mountain Scholarship. Arjun splits his time between San Francisco and Aspen.

Naren Gupta
Nexus India Capital

Naren launched Nexus India Capital in 2006 to make venture investments in India. The fund is based in Mumbai, India with an office in Menlo Park. Nexus focuses on early and early-growth stage investments in a variety of sectors including consumer, technology, services and Cleantech.

Edgar Kuipers
Kenda Capital

Edgar Kuipers joined Kenda Capital in April 2008. Prior to this, he worked 18 years for Royal Dutch Shell mainly on the development of Shell’s international LNG and GTL business. In his last Shell assignment as Director Gas Markets, he made significant contributions to the North American gas industry with its transition from historic domestic natural gas supplies to new non-conventional natural gas supplies such as LNG. Before joining Shell, Edgar held research positions at Cambridge University (England), Tel Aviv University (Israel) and the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (The Netherlands). He holds a PhD in Chemistry from Amsterdam University and a M.Sc. in Physics from Groningen University, The Netherlands.

Satish Mandhana
IDFC Private Equity

Satish is Managing Director – Investment at IDFC PE and he has over 25 years of private equity and corporate finance / business strategy experience. IDFCPE is India's leading Infrastructure focussed Private Equity firm sponsored by IDFC Ltd. IDFC PE currently manages two funds amounting to USD 635 million. He joined IDFC PE in April 2006 and is responsible for various investments of the firm over their lifecycle i.e. origination to exit. He was earlier a Director of CDC Advisors (now Actis – emerging markets PE Fund) where he was involved in many important investments and exits such as investment in privatisation of Punjab Tractor or investment in initial capitalisation of IDFC. Over nearly six years he was involved with Energy, Telecom, Technology and Financial sectors and led change of control transactions. Actis was and early mover in mobile telephony and telecom convergence space in India. Immediately prior to joining IDFC PE he worked with JK Paper Ltd for nearly two and half years as CFO and Head of Business Strategy in a challenging turnaround assignment. At JK Paper he restructured a USD 188m balance sheet and raised USD 177 million funds including private equity of $25m. He also initiated the model of using Carbon sequestration as a tool to get additional area under social forestry and provide sustained raw material supply to paper mill. In early nineties as head of Investment Banking at SRF Finance (now part of GE Capital) he set up the Structured Finance, Corporate Broking, Investment Banking and Private Equity practice of the company and led the company in the areas of securitisation, advisory and investments.

Ajay Mehta
Crossover Advisors

Pankaj Sehgal
SUN Group

Mr. Sehgal has over 18 years of experience in technology-related investments. He currently heads technology and clean tech initiatives at the SUN Group. Earlier, he was with McKinsey & Company, where he counselled CEOs and boards of leading global companies in communication, wireless, software, retail, and energy sectors on broad-ranging business issues including corporate strategy, mergers and acquisitions, corporate restructuring, and business turnaround. He was Managing Director of Quark, a $300 million software company, where he managed a 1,600-employee organization across Asia Pacific; Vice President at world’s leading supply chain management and logistics company, i2 Technologies, and has held management positions with Kraft Foods. Mr Sehgal has an MBA from Kellogg School of Business, Northwestern University, where he was a Jane Robertson Scholar, and M.S. in Computer Science from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago.

Samir Sood
Google

Samir Sood is the Head of South Asia, Australia - M&A and Investments for Google Inc., a provider of Internet search technology and has led investments in India such as Seedfund, Erasmic Venture Fund and Ventureast TeNet Fund II. Samir is also responsible for Google.org’s investment activities in the region. Prior to his appointment at Google, Samir was a member of the Corporate Business Development team at Cisco Systems, Inc. where he lead wireless acquisitions and investments, which included the $450 million acquisition of Airspace. Samir executed the first venture investment in India (India Games) for Cisco Systems, Inc. among many other acquisitions and investments. Samir has also worked at Microsoft Corporation as a Market Intelligence Manager identifying growth and market opportunities in the small and medium business software customer segment. Samir started his career on Wall Street with Lehman Brothers as an Investment Banking Analyst in New York. In India, Samir was part of the founding team that set-up the Lehman Brothers Investment Banking office after spending a few years on Wall Street. Samir has operational experience in India, having managed an auto parts manufacturing facility with the India Forge Group of companies. Samir has a MBA from the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business, a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Tufts University, and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Ravi Viswanathan
NEA

Ravi joined NEA in February 2004 as a Principal and became a Partner in December 2004. He focuses on information technology investments. Prior to joining NEA, Ravi worked at Goldman, Sachs & Co. and led direct, fund, and secondary investments in the areas of information technology and life sciences. Prior to Goldman Sachs, Ravi worked for McKinsey & Company and advised clients in the software, communications, and pharmaceutical sectors on strategy, acquisitions and new business building. Previously, Ravi worked for Raychem Corporation in the Corporate Technology Division where he focused on research and product development in semiconductors, liquid crystals, and other materials systems. Ravi received a Masters in Business Administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara where he focused his research on materials science applications in molecular electronics, biomaterials, and nanotechnology. Prior to graduate school, Ravi received a BS in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania.