People

Gayatri Sarkar

Gayatri Sarkar is the Founder and CEO of Advaita Capital. Gayatri is also the Founder of She-VC, a media podcast platform dedicated to highlighting women and diverse investors. She's been recognized as a global leader under 40 for her efforts in promoting diversity in the investment industry. Previously she has worked at Hewlett Packard, later IBM and Goldman Sachs. She worked as a Federal Reserve Bank Manager- managing US Treasury’s projects for the US Military/ Navy, including big banks like JPM, PNC, G&D, and VISA. She started her career as a database architect and later founded a consulting firm and a tech startup at Harvard i-lab while studying at Harvard. She works closely alongside her team on climate tech startup selection for Prince William’s foundation created Earthshot Prize, where Advaita Capital is an official nominator. Gayatri is also a crown patron of Princess Grace Kelly Foundation run by HSH Prince Albert of Monaco. The foundation supports extraordinary emerging artists in theater, dance and film through career advancing grants. Gayatri is based primarily in Massachusetts with her family. Gayatri is also a part of the AI working group of National Venture Capital Association, where Advaita Capital is a member. 

She is a Physics Honors graduate from University of Calcutta, India and did research on condensed matter of Physics. Later she graduated from Harvard University studying  Economics, Finance and Game Theory. In 2023, she completed 6 years of term as a Board of Director at Harvard Kennedy School New England Alumni Association.

Anand Radhakrishnan

Anand Radhakrishnan is a Venture Partner at Advaita Capital and is involved in due diligence and managing deal operations in Advaita Capital. Anand spent nearly 21 years with Investcorp International, a global alternative asset manager with over $50 billion of AUM, where he remains a Senior Advisor.  At Investcorp, he most recently was Head of Investcorp’s North American Technology Partnerships where he led Investcorp’s Joint Venture, UTA VC, with United Talent Agency.  Previously, he was the COO of Investcorp’s North American Private Equity Group and also held numerous other roles including Head of Investcorp’s M&A and business development efforts and Principal investor with Investcorp’s Technology Partners team managing over $1 billion in technology investments in North America and Europe.  Anand is currently Chairman of the Board of Directors of Unilog Corporation, an e-commerce software provider.  He was previously on the Boards of TPX Communications, Nobel Learning Communities, Skrill USA, Opsec Security Group, Wireless Telecom Group, Kentrox, Zeta Interactive, and Platform Solutions. Started his career as an Associate with The Carlyle Group (Venture Capital Group) and later at Robertson Stephens in San Francisco, where he was a member of the Technology Mergers and Acquisitions Team. He was a member of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and has published original research in the field of Natural Language Processing.  Anand was also member of the MIT Distributed Computing and Networking Services team where he worked on one of the first 100 web sites in the world.  Anand is also Chairman of the Advisory Board of the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Effective Global.

 

Anand holds a SB degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a Minor in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA with Distinction from the Harvard Business School. 

Chase Seklar

Chase is an integral part of Advaita Capital investment team. He is responsible for the first level of due diligence and deal management in Advaita Capital. Chase is also responsible for assisting in investor relations, fund operations, fund media management, fund event management and works closely with Gayatri Sarkar and other Partners. Previously he was the founder and President of Detroit-based non-profit. He worked on various research projects at Wharton School including ones on Climate Change, Prospect Theory, and Astrophysics. He was awarded the Penn Alumni Merit Award for leadership, service, and academic excellence. He is also the head of LA LGBT+ VC non-profit. Chase serves on the Junior Committee for the Princess Grace Kelly-USA Foundation. Chase is Los Angeles-based and works closely in building the west coast Advaita Capital venture community towards innovation and science.

Chase graduated from Wharton School with a degree in Economics and was on the Dean’s List. 

Felix Sosa

Felix is part of the investment team and is an integral part of due diligence in deep tech investments. Previously, worked as a Researcher at Google Deepmind. He also worked as a research scientist at the MIT-IBM Watson Lab working on neurosymbolic systems for physical reasoning in AI. While studying Biology, Chemistry, and Computer Science in undergraduate, Felix invented the first open-ended neuroevolutionary algorithm under the advisement of Ken Stanley for neural architecture search.

Felix is a cognitive scientist and AI researcher, PhD candidate in computational cognitive science at Harvard and MIT’s Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines as a Harvard Prize Fellow. He is a undergraduate in Computer Science from University of Florida. He did his Masters of Science in Computer Science from Harvard University, where he focused on the study of probabilistic computation, programming languages, program induction/synthesis, and computational theory.

Nichin S.

Nichin Sreekantaswamy works on due diligence, technical analysis, deal analysis in Advaita Capital. He also leads Advaita Capital’s effort in selecting startup nominee for Earthshot Prize, created by Prince William Foundation. He comes with an extensive hardware design background, having helped build iPhone Pro and Pro Max at Apple, Body Worn Cameras / Tasers at Axon and AgTech sensors at an early stage startup. Nichin has also worked on iPhone's Motherboard design, A-Series Bionic Chips, Camera and Display systems, High Speed Digital Interfaces, Battery charging and management chips, Wireless Charging, Power Electronics, Rigid and Flexible PCB design, Product Safety and EMC/RF certifications,  High Voltage Taser design, Wearable Cameras and Police LMR Radio design, etc.  Nichin lives in the Bay Area with his family.

Nichin holds degrees in Electrical Engineering from BITS Pilani and holds a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Pennsylvania. 

Saup D.

Saup is a Venture Partner with a focus on DeepTech and Hardware expertise. A prolific hardware design engineer with 15+ yrs industry experience., he designed battery chargers and chips for the early generations of Apple iPhones and iPad and also developed the sixth, seventh and eighth generations of automotive radars power chips. His Phd thesis was on magnetic machines and electronics for power micro-electro-mechanical systems  (MEMS) applications.

He completed Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering along with a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2002. He completed his Phd in Electrical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2005. 

Alex Bebov

Alex is a co-GP in late stage vehicle in decarbonization and large ESG infrastructure projects and investment due diligence. Alex Bebov is the founder of BAC IP EAD (BAC Securities) and has been active in the European energy sector for over 20 years. He was the main manager of the first East-European REIT and worked on many European renewable projects and debt financings. His investment banking experience includes JP Morgan, Salomon Smith Barney Citigroup, Prudential Securities, and Chemical Bank. He has extensive energy project experience across Central and Eastern Europe including electricity trading, M&A, debt and equity raising, and advisory services. Alex lives in London with family.

Alex hold MBA from New York University and holds a Masters of Public Policy from Harvard University and a member of the Harvard Alumni Association. 

Ashish Kumar

Ashish is an advisor to Advaita Capital in climate investing and emerging market investor relations. Previously, Ashish served in the role of Climate & Innovation Lead at the Shell Foundation (SF) – a UK charity independent but linked to the Shell Corporate – focused on a) funding Impact Fund Managers via blended finance (as a specialized LP), b) funding early-stage ClimateTech impact ventures (Directs), and c) funding and co-creating market-building ecosystem activities that cover inclusive energy transition, Gender Finance, FinTech etc. This is focused across several EM ClimateTech sectors, including renewables/energy access (SDG 7), AgriTech, E-Mobility, Circular Economy etc. Originated and closed a $100m MOU partnership between Nuveen/TIAA and Shell Foundation. Formerly at Dalberg Advisors. Ashish lives in London with family.

Ashish has Bachelors  in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and holds a MBA from University of Oxford.