Directors
Pavan Kumar
Co-Founder
Workbench began as an idea that plagued Founder and Director Pavan for two years. He’s got a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Mechanical Engineering. He was head of products and communication at Brains for Science and Technology Aided Reforms in Society (BrainSTARS). Before that, he was an Associate Process Engineer with 3D Systems Inc in South Carolina, USA, where he worked on optimizing 3D printers.
Anupama Gowda
Co-Founder
Anupama Gowda, is the hand that runs Workbench Projects. She is master of ceremonies, operations and logistics. She led Kali-Kalisu, a joint initiative of the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan and India Foundation. As Founder Director of Open Minds Education Initiatives initiated an alternate pre-school in Shimoga. As former Director of BrainSTARS spearheaded thier pioneering maths activity centre called NumberNagar. .
Raghav Narayan
Director
Raghav is corporate finance and strategy consultant with experience in of over 12 years. He works closely with financial and technology start-ups in strategizing and refining execution. He has intimate familiarity with domestic regulation, finance eco-system and has spearheaded 10 NBFC acquisitions, registrations and collaborations for business line expansion and assisted clients in investment transactions.
Mentors
Owen Priestly
Mentor
Owen has worked in new product development and Financial Services consultant for over 8 years. He’s hungry, ambitious and values history, loyalty, delivery excellence, Juggaad and sustainable Innovation. He has attacked client challenges in Dublin, London, Moscow, Singapore, NYC, San Francisco, Florida, Bangalore and Mumbai.
Mike LaRosa
Mentor
In addition to consulting and speaking on coworking and social/shared workspace focused projects, Mike is fascinated with creating dynamic and engaging sponsorable content, programs and products paired with innovative marketing campaigns. Pairing his passions with his skill sets, Mike has recently co-founded Communitas, a new agency based in Chicago, IL dedicated to bringing experiential marketing to coworking spaces around the world. Clients have included: LivingSocial, Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, Google, Smithsonian Enterprises, Rosslyn BID, REach: the National Association of Realtors’ Tech Accelerator, the Global Coworking Unconference Conference (GCUC) and Coworking Alliance of Asia Pacific.
Manojna Yeluri
Mentor
Manojna Yeluri is the founder and principal legal consultant of Artistik License. She is a legal consultant and researcher, passionate about working with artists and professionals in various creative industries. Based out of Bangalore and Hyderabad, she advises artists and entrepreneurs on a range of legal issues by way of her website, specialized workshops, lectures and consultations. She undertakes research on important issues affecting the business of culture and has been invited to several platformsincluding WOMEX.
Nakul Goswami
Mentor
Nakul has more than 14 years of experience in the areas of business building, strategy, growth & technology assessment, innovation, and new product introduction. He has driven organizational growth initiatives, roadmaps, strategy, for product-based businesses in diverse sectors like healthcare, energy, retail etc. across diverse organizational domains. Winner of the 2015 Zinnov Award for Excellence in Category “Innovation Potential to Solve Large Scale Problems” for the EyeScreening and Detection Solution and one of the 6 finalists at the HIMSS AsiaPac Innovation award 2015 (Singapore), Nakul has an established track record of creating product innovations that solve challenging social problems. He also has vast experience in IP creation and co-creation, and its intricacies.
Kiran Jonnalagadda
Mentor
He’s co-founder of HasGeek, where he’s on the mission to help people in the technology industry learn from their peers and discover new opportunities. HasGeek hosts lwell regarded technology conferences and workshops, including The Fifth Elephant, India’s largest data and analytics conference.
Dina El-Zanfaly
Mentor
Dina El-Zanfaly is a designer, maker, architect and educator whose research
examines new ways of human-machine interaction in making and its implementation in creativity and design pedagogy. She is a doctoral candidate in
the Design and Computation group in the Architecture department at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, where she also
earned her Master of Science in Architecture Studies (SMArchS) in Design and Computation while being a Fulbright scholar. She is also a co-founder and co-
director of Fab Lab Egypt (FLE), the first community maker space in northern
Africa and the Arab world. FLE provides both virtual and physical making
environments for young Egyptians, fostering creativity and innovation. Moreover, She worked on integrating two fabrication labs, in two STEM schools in Egypt under the USAID, and she helped in integrating the fab lab in the STEM
curriculum. Her work and Achievements have been selected by MIT to be
highlighted in the MIT news.
Neeraj gupta
Mentor
Neeraj is Founder & CEO at FormulateIP based in India and USA. Applying his
business and technical background, Neeraj assists clients in protecting and expanding
their domestic and international knowledge-based businesses using IP protection,
licensing and strategic planning.
Neeraj is Co-founder and Director at Excubator which provides guidance and
support needed to entrepreneurs for building a successful entrepreneurial practice.
Neeraj is Founder and Managing Director at Lawcubator which is a technology firm in
legal domain.
Neeraj is CEO at IIT Roorkee’s startup incubator called TIDES. Neeraj is Co-
founder of PanIIT Mentors which is a Nation Building Initiative under PanIIT.
Neeraj is Executive Council member and Treasurer for IIT Alumni Centre
Bangalore . Neeraj is founding EC member of Federation of Indo-Israeli Chamber of
Commerce (South). Neeraj is one of the experts at Swissnex India
(www.swissnexindia.org ) and advises Swiss startups.
K.G. Kumar
Mentor
He’s Director (Headquarters), of NCSM and was responsible for setting up 11 new science centres in country. He’s Director of the Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum, Bangalore and was also Director of the National Gallery of Modern Art. He has 36 years of experience in communication and science popularization activities.
Evelyn McDonald
Mentor
Evelyn McDonald is the CEO of Scottish EDGE, a funding competition aimed at identifying Scotland’s, innovative, high growth potential entrepreneurial talent. Previously run by Scottish Enterprise for four rounds, Evelyn oversaw the spin out of the competition in Autumn 2014 to the private sector led Scottish EDGE C.I.C funded by RBS, Scottish Government, the Hunter Foundation and private donors. To date Scottish EDGE has awarded nearly £5.7 million to 170 businesses in Scotland. Excluding the 39 winners in Round 7 the businesses have created 479 new jobs to date, generated £21.6 million of additional turnover and attracted £18.7 million of external funding. The introduction of lending to the winners in Round 5 – Scottish EDGE and Higgs EDGE prizes are 50:50 loan and grant – has created a revolving loan fund to support future applicants. Prior to joining the EDGE in November 2014, Evelyn had a long career at the Prince’s Scottish Youth Business Trust, and latterly the Prince’s Trust, initially in pre-start support and then in operations. In 2002, she helped set up and run a successful growth fund which assisted over 300 Trust-supported businesses, including BrewDog and Aircraft Medical, providing access to loans of up to £25k and follow-on support. Evelyn is also an assessor of the Small Business Charter Award.
Ankit Daftery
Mentor
I build connected devices and systems for them to connect to.
I also love building interactive installations and quirky objects that evoke or express emotion.
Sridhar Srigiriraju
Mentor
Sridhar is business leader for converting ideas to business. adept in formulating business transformation strategies. He is the top thought leader in knowledge services space in India and helped multiple ITES and KPO companies to launch their research and analytics divisions, innovating business models to build orthogonal thinking.