Food & Agri Investment Summit 2018

Jinesh Shah is the co-founder of Omnivore Partners, a venture fund investing in early stage Indian start-ups developing breakthrough technologies for food, agriculture and rural livelihoods.

Jinesh is a closely involved with multiple Omnivore-backed startups, including Stellapps Technologies, Barrix Agro Sciences, AgNext, Ecozen and FR8. Previously, Jinesh was the Vice President and CFO at Nexus Venture Partners, one of India’s leading early stage venture capital funds, where he lead the finance organization and also few select portfolio investments. He earlier served in Finance roles with Datamatics (leading Treasury/M&A), Patni Computers (initiating the IPO process), and HCL Technologies (founding the BPO business).

He is a Chartered Accountant with B.Com from R. A. Poddar College and an MMS (Finance) from the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS).

Krishna Kumar, Founder and CEO at CropIn Technology Solutions, has made it possible to enable data-driven farming by connecting all the stakeholders in the agri ecosystem. CropIn is a leading Global Full-Stack AgTech Company that provides SaaS based solutions thus enabling businesses to utilize technology to effectively drive their initiatives around Digitization, Compliance, Sustainability and Traceability.

CropIn is passionately driven with the mission to 'maximize per acre value' and the vision to 'make every farm traceable'. With robust solutions that are crop and region agnostic, CropIn has so far digitized nearly 3.2 million acres of farmland, enriching the lives of nearly 2.1 million farmers in addition to creating a footprint in 29 countries globally.

Hemendra has over 22 years of experience in venture capital, private equity, management consulting and investment banking.

Hemendra in his career has invested in early stage agritech companies and SMEs in food processing and agricultural supply chain. He is a mentor, investor and board member with several food and ag-tech start-ups working on innovations in agri-inputs, market linkages, mechanization, food nutrition and farmer financing.

Hemendra is working as Venture Partner with Bharat Innovation Fund.  In his previous assignments; he has worked with SEAF, Yes Bank, Rabobank, KSA Technopak and ORG-MARG.

He has authored many papers on the subject and speaks regularly at conferences pertaining to food and agribusiness sector. He is a management graduate from IIM (Ahmedabad) and Agricultural Engineer from Rajasthan Agricultural University.

A graduate from IIT Roorkee, Prasoon Gupta, Co-Founder and Director, Sattviko, is a serial entrepreneur. Owing to his talent and business acumen he was recognized as the youngest ‘Distinguished Alumni’ from IIT Roorkee and one of the youngest charter members of TiE Delhi. Prasoon has an extensive experience in entrepreneurship to his credit as he founded his first venture, ‘Techbuddy Consulting Pvt Ltd’ when he was still a student at the IIT.

Hailing from a rooted family with a modern outlook, he conceptualized ‘Sattviko Food’ based on traditional Indian recipes by giving them a modern twist with help of food technology. Thus with an aim to add a little bit of ‘Indianess’ to every household, he along with his friend Ankush Sharma in 2014 founded Sattviko which today has become India’s fastest growing food brand. The premium brand offers more than 25 tasty and healthy packaged snacks from across the Indian states such as Khakhra, Makhane, flavoured raisin, Gur-Chana, flavoured flax seeds, peanuts etc.

Under his leadership, Sattviko is growing with leaps and bounds. In 2017 Sattviko raised an undisclosed amount of Pre-Series-A investment from a bunch of investors led by Raman Roy, chairman of Nasscom. During the last financial year (2017-18) it grew at 700 percent rate and very soon high-quality Sattviko quick bites will be available in the middle-east and European countries.

After becoming a success story in just three years, Prasoon was rewarded with ‘Young Entrepreneur of the Year’ in December last year by TiE Delhi NCR. Well known publication—Business World recognized him among the top 40 young entrepreneur in its 40 under 40 series. ‘Under Make in India’ programme Ministry of Skill Development conferred ‘National Entrepreneurship Award’ on Sattviko. The venture has also been nominated among top 20 startups of the country by Ministry of Food Processing, Govt of India. As Sattviko has a lot of anecdotes to say, its story has been published by Ivey Publishing and ISB in form of a successful case study for budding entrepreneurs. During his initial days with Techbuddy, he trained more than 15,000 students across the country and earned the ‘Pioneer of Tomorrow’ and India’s hottest startups awards from reputed publication houses for his venture.

Apart from business ventures, Prasoon also founded a non-profit organization called Swarajneeti, an NGO which is dedicated to democratic reforms in India through technological innovations.

In his leisure time he loves to travel. He believes in making new acquaintances, particularly with entrepreneurs. As a firm believer in ‘Karma’, he has been helping a number of startups and has also invested in couple of them.