Board of Directors
Vinod K. Dham
Acclaimed worldwide as the "Father of the Pentium Processor," Vinod (Vin) Dham is the Founder and Executive Managing Director of NEA-IndoUS Ventures, an India-focused venture fund aimed at early stage investments.
Dham is also a Co-Founder and Managing Director of NewPath Ventures, a $130m LLC, which concentrates on cross-border incubations.
Prior to founding NEA-IndoUS and NewPath, Dham was the Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Silicon Spice Inc., a start-up involved in developing innovative "Voice Over Internet" technologies. Broadcom Corporation acquired Silicon Spice for $1.2B.
Dham spent the early years of his career at Intel Corporation where he served as Vice President and General Manager of the Microprocessor Products group and managed the highly successful Pentium, 486 and 386 Microprocessors businesses. Earlier in his career at Intel, Dham was responsible for developing non-volatile memory technologies at Intel and NCR. He is also a co-inventor of Intel's Flash memory technology.
After 16 years at Intel Corporation, Dham joined microprocessor start-up, "NexGen," as its Chief Operating Officer. Dham was instrumental in redefining Nexgen's processor direction and engineering its merger with Advanced Micro Devices. At AMD, Dham became the Group Vice President responsible for all of the microprocessor businesses and supervisor of the K6 launch.
Dham has been named one of the top 25 executives in the U.S. computer industry and one of the top 100 most influential Asian Americans of the past decade. He has served on the U.S. President's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Dham also served on the Board of the American Indian Foundation (AIF), a nonprofit organization charged with the mission of accelerating social and economic change in India. He has served on the board of The Indus Entrepreneur, TIE- world's largest entrepreneurial organization and is its Charter Member. He also serves on the Boards of Satyam, Sasken, InSilica, Nevis, Telsima, Minekey and ISGN.
Dham has a Bachelors and Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering.
David Frankel
David Frankel is a general partner of Ovation, and the co-founder of Altirah Capital, a South African private equity and hedge fund group. He is also a director of Rand Merchant Bank (RMB). Frankel was the CEO and co-founder of Internet Solutions (IS), the largest ISP in Africa. He was an Executive Director of Dimension Data plc from 2000-2004 (post selling IS to Didata). Frankel was also co-founder and Chairman of HealthBridge and is currently the Chairman of Cura Risk. Frankel's investments in South Africa include Cyest Corporation, Clickatell and Alchemy Properties. In the U.S., Frankel co-founded and seeded a number of early stage technology companies. His partners include Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst, Intel Capital, IDG and others. Sales of companies which Frankel helped seed/initiate include Siteadvisor (sold to McAfee), Brontes3G (sold to 3M) & Getmein (sold to Ticketmaster). In 1998, he was voted Computer Society of South Africa's "Information Technology Person of the Year." In 2000, he was voted the South African Technology Achiever of the Century, by the Financial Mail.
The World Economic Forum later selected Frankel for the GLT program in Davos, Switzerland. Frankel also has an outstanding educational background. He holds an honors degree in Electrical Engineering (Wits) and, post selection for the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Program, earned an MBA with distinction, from the Harvard Business School. Frankel is the Founder of ISPA (the South African Internet Service Providers Association) and he currently serves on the boards of several nonprofit organizations including SAVCA (SA Venture Capital Association), Foundation 2000, the King David Schools Foundation and Endeavor South Africa.
Greg Frank
Greg Frank is the managing partner of Ovation Capital, a New York based investment fund with both venture capital and quantitative trading programs. Prior to founding Ovation Capital in 1999, he held several senior positions at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, WA, and prior to that at Murray and Roberts, where he was responsible for principal transactions. Frank has led many of Ovation's venture capital investments in software companies, including Ovation's investment in Connectiva Systems. He also developed the mathematical algorithms that drive Ovation's quantitative trading and risk control methodologies, has given lectures on machine learning applications in quantitative finance. He was co-founder of Technologic, a system integration company for financial institutions.
Frank has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a degree in Electronic Engineering conferred with first class honors from the University of Cape Town. He is an avid chef, recreational glider pilot, and marathon runner. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and son.
Pravan Malhotra
Pravan Malhotra is a Senior Investment Officer in the Global Information and Communication Technologies group of the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group. He focuses on investments in technology, media and telecommunications companies in India. Prior to joining IFC, Malhotra was a Principal with ORIX Venture Finance, a New York-based subsidiary of a Japanese financial services conglomerate. At ORIX, Malhotra was responsible for analyzing, structuring, and executing principal investments in venture-backed technology, telecommunications, business services, health care and financial services companies. Prior to ORIX, he worked with Metropolitan Venture Partners, a transatlantic venture capital fund in New York and London, and Global Bridge Ventures, an emerging market focused venture capital fund in San Francisco. Earlier in his career, Malhotra was an investment banker at BMO Nesbitt Burns and a Credit Analyst at the Tokai Bank in Chicago. He holds an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Abhi Chaki
Abhi Chaki is a Partner at Sage Capital, a private equity firm in Mumbai, India. Chaki has more than 12 years of operations and investment management experience. Prior to joining Sage, Chaki was a Partner at Phoenix Partners, a New York-based advisory company, where he counseled private equity funds and their portfolio companies on a wide range of strategic issues including recapitalizations, buyouts, restructurings and growth initiatives. He has also held senior management positions with Jupiter Communications and Siemens. Chaki was educated at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Avi Basu
Avi Basu is the Founder, President and Chief Executive of Connectiva Systems. He has been responsible for creating and executing Connectiva's strategy since its inception, resulting in significant developments for the company. Under his leadership, Connectiva has transformed itself from an early stage product company into a leading provider of revenue and risk management solutions. Basu has led Connectiva by securing strategic sources of capital, leading major customer acquisitions and establishing key global alliances to drive 100 percent growth annually for the past four years. Basu has over 17 years of experience in the communications and software industry. Prior to co-founding Connectiva, he held senior leadership positions in sales and business development, operations and professional services for global companies including LHS and SEMA.
Board Observer
Jai Das
Jai Das is a Partner with SAP Ventures and is responsible for SAP Ventures' investment strategy in India. He also evaluates new investment opportunities in Open Source and in platform and infrastructure software that enable next generation SOA and SaaS based applications. Das spent seven years designing and building software applications as a lead architect, as a product manager and as an entrepreneur before focusing on investing in technology startups. Prior to SAP Ventures, he was responsible for strategic equity investments at Intel Capital and at Agilent Ventures (formerly part of Hewlett-Packard). Das was also a principal with MVC Capital, a Draper Fisher Jurvetson affiliated venture fund where he led investments in software, business services, storage, and data-center systems. He received his MBA from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business where he was awarded the George Hay Brown Prize for academic excellence and earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Brown University.