Narayan Laksham, Founder and CEO
Narayan Laksham founded Ultriva as eBots in 1999 with a vision of building a company that develops customer driven solutions which guarantee high value, quick deployment and measurable return on investment. During his 30-year career, Mr. Laksham has seen software companies repeatedly build applications with underpowered architectures, resulting in customers experiencing high cost of ownership, extensive implementation programs and complex integration projects. Mr. Laksham set out to turn this paradigm on its head by applying lean concepts to software development and deployment.
Over these years Mr. Laksham has visited over 150 factories worldwide to understand how IT solutions can sustain lean implementations across manufacturing value chains from Distribution to supply chain. The outcome is the Lean Execution Platform being offered by Ultriva. Mr. Laksham has written articles on several lean topics including "When Push comes to Pull Kanban wins". He is also a co-inventor of the patent pending “Lean Assessment Tool”.
Mr. Laksham is a big proponent for retaining manufacturing in USA. In his free time he participates in activities to promote this cause. He is a strong believer of "Manufacturing should be where the market is".
Earlier in his career, Mr. Laksham held a variety of executive, sales, product management, and technical marketing positions with Symantec, Computer Vision, Unisys and DEC. Mr. Laksham holds a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master's degree in Marketing Management.
Rao Kota, Cofounder and Chief Technology Officer.
Rao Kota acts as both the chief architect and head of development for all Ultriva applications. Mr. Kota has over 26 years of experience in the fields of hardware, firmware and application infrastructure. During these years, he has been instrumental in the design and development of application development tools, database management tools, CRM applications and application middleware at both start-ups and major corporations. Mr. Kota joins Ultriva from Amdocs where he spent 9 years as one of the primary architects for their web-based CRM applications. These applications have set new standards in performance and scalability with some of the most demanding customers in the world. Prior to Amdocs, Mr. Kota worked as chief architect and development manager for Integra Technologies, New York, and holds a patent in the area of reusing database object identifiers. Mr. Kota graduated from Andhra University with a Bachelors degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering.
Jeanne Angelo-Pardo, Acting CFO.
Ms. Angelo-Pardo has over 27 years of financial experience. Most recently, she was Chief Financial Officer of deCarta, Inc., a location-based services software company. At deCarta she assisted in raising over $52M in venture equity, and helped the company grow from $2.1M in revenue to over $14M. Ms. Angelo-Pardo also spent 10 years at Cadence Design Systems, Inc. and held a variety of financial management positions, most recently as Treasurer. Ms. Angelo-Pardo graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a Bachelors degree in Business Economics, and became a Certified Public Accountant in 1983.
Mr. Demirjian is the Vice President of Global Supply Chain at OK International, a Dover Company. OKI is a global manufacturer of PCBA soldering, rework, fluid dispensing, fume extraction equipment and consumables with its head quarters in Southern California. Mr. Demirjian has 20 years of manufacturing experience of which the most recent 7 years have been with OKI. He has an excellent track record of achieving business results through the usage of lean, business process reengineering, six sigma and building synergy between technology and operations. His previous experience includes managing a plant at Jensen Industries for 8 years.
Mr. Demirjian has a Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from California State Polytechnic Institute and an MBA in Finance from Loyola Marymount University in California.
Ingo Heel is the Director for Operational Excellence in Microsoft's Industry Solution Organization. His responsibilities include strategy development, sales, marketing, partner recruiting, and integration of Microsoft's partner-led Solutions with the Microsoft sales force. Prior to his current role, Ingo was Director of Lean Manufacturing Solutions in Microsoft's U.S. manufacturing industry organization. Prior to that, he was responsible for Enterprise Project Management solutions in the manufacturing industry unit, product management and marketing of Microsoft's Operations-based solutions including the Microsoft Office Solution Accelerator for Six Sigma, and he was Group Product Manager of Microsoft's Project business unit.
Ingo has a bachelor's degree in MIS from James Madison University and a Master's degree in Marketing from The University of Alabama.
Richard W. (Rick) Shuppert - Advisor
Rick Shuppert is currently Director—Materials & Distribution for A.O Smith, Johnson City, Tennessee. Rick has worked for A.O.Smith and (prior to acquisition) American Water Heater Company for over twelve years. Past employers include Dow Chemical, Ingersoll Rand and Reliance Electric (now Rockwell International).
He is recognized by APICS as a Certified Fellow in Production and Inventory Management (CFPIM) and Certified in Integrated Resources Management (CIRM). He is also recognized by the Institute of Supply Management as a lifetime Certified Purchasing Manager (C.P.M.), and he remains active in both APICS and ISM. He has successfully implemented pull systems that lead to a cost reduction of $20 million in purchased parts while improving the inventory accuracy to 97%.
Rick has been an Adjunct Professor for East Tennessee State University and guest lecturer for Arkansas State University. His educational background includes a Bachelors Degree in Industrial Management from Purdue University and an M.B.A. from Central Michigan University.
Mr. Foote is a partner at Labrador Ventures. He has been a venture capitalist investing in early stage companies for the past 9 years. He is active on the board of directors of Altierre Corporation, Eoplex Technologies, Everyone.net, Integrated Materials Inc and Solaicx. Prior to venture investing, Mr. Foote was a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group and a systems engineer for AT&T Bell Laboratories. Mr. Foote received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Missouri Rolla (1988), and his MBA from the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business (1993).
Howard Hartenbaum - Investor
Howard Hartenbaum is a General Partner at Draper Richards. He focuses on investments in enterprise and consumer software and services, wireless network solutions, and peer-to-peer technology. His current directorships include LucidPort, NearbyNow and Zimbio. He led the founding investment in Skype (acquired by eBay), and was also a former member of the board of directors where his achievement resulted in his joining the Forbes Midas List of top venture capitalists for the years 2006-2007. Prior to joining Draper Richards, Mr. Hartenbaum held positions at Hughes Electronics, where he was responsible for supporting business development, marketing and sales of satellite, information security and automotive technologies developed by HRL Technologies. He has also worked in engineering positions at Honda Motor Company and Teledyne Relays. Mr. Hartenbaum has worked overseas for a total of ten years in Luxembourg and Japan, is professionally fluent in Japanese and a graduate of M.I.T.
Paul Chau is a partner at WI Harper. With over 18 years of private equity, consulting and technical experience, Mr. Chau oversees venture capital investments and the management of WI Harper's information technology sector in the U.S. Prior to joining WI Harper, Mr. Chau served as vice president at Walden International and handled investments and the management of existing portfolio companies. He also served as vice president at GIC Special Investment Private Ltd (Government of Singapore Investment Corporation), where he oversaw direct private equity and fund investments in the United States. Before joining GIC, Mr. Chau was a senior consultant with BARRA, a financial consulting company for pension funds and money management firms. He served as a member of the board of directors at USI Insurance Corporation and presently holds several directorships in various technology companies. Within WI Harper, Paul is responsible for investments in Ultriva and Cnano.
Mr. Chau holds an M.B.A. from University of California, Berkeley and a B.S. in electrical engineering from University of Canterbury.