Founders Club

Eshwar Das is founder and managing partner at Landmark Banyan, a private equity Fund based in New York, and former vice chairman of investment banking at Merrill Lynch, where he focused on corporate finance and investment banking for 20 years. Since 2000, he has invested in or financed numerous Indian and U.S.-based companies. Eshwar is president of E.S.P. Das Educational Foundation and a former trustee at Brown University.

Mark Fuller is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Monitor Group, a firm he co-founded in 1983.  The Group currently competes in three different businesses:  general management consulting, principal investing, and information services, including research and software solutions.  Mark formerly served as an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, where he taught courses in strategy formulation and implementation, as well as industry and competitive analysis.  Mark graduated from Harvard College where he received a BA degree in history with High Honors and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.  He later received an MBA from Harvard Business School and a JD from Harvard Law School with Honors.

Vikram Gandhi is a managing director and global head of the Financial Institutions Group at Credit Suisse, where he manages many of the firm's most important client relationships in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Previously, he spent a decade with Morgan Stanley, including service as president of Morgan Stanley-India. Vikram serves on the board of directors of the Grameen Foundation, which supports microfinance programs that help the poor—mostly women—start self-sustaining businesses to escape poverty. He is a 1989 graduate of the Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar.

Mala Gaonkar Haarmann is the managing director at an investment fund. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School, Mala and her husband, Oliver, have been longtime supporters of the University, where they have established the Global Health Effectiveness Research Fund, researching best practices in the delivery of high quality yet cost-effective medical care in areas where there are few options today. They support a variety of public health initiatives in India and Africa.

Anand Mahindra is the vice chairman and managing director of Mahindra & Mahindra Limited, the largest tractor manufacturer in India, where he is leading a comprehensive change program to make the company an efficient and aggressive competitor in India's liberalized economic environment. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School, Anand and his wife, Anu, are active in community and non-profit activities in India and around the world. Anand has served on the Board of Dean's Advisors and the Asia Pacific Regional Advisory Board at Harvard Business School, and on the board of the University's Asia Center.

Sanjeev Mehra is a managing director at Goldman Sachs, where he leads the Operating Committee for its Principal Investment Area. He serves on numerous corporate boards, including those of ARAMARK, Burger King, Hawker Beechcraft, and SunGard Data Systems. A trustee of Oakham School in England, Sanjeev also serves on the board of Trout Unlimited and is a Fellow of the Foreign Policy Association. He and his wife, Karen, a 1982 graduate of Harvard College, are trustees of the Mehra Family Foundation. Sanjeev serves as gift co-chair of his Harvard College class and sits on the Harvard College Fund Council.

Victor J. Menezes retired in January 2005 as Senior Vice Chairman of Citigroup after a 32-year global career with the company. As Senior Vice Chairman, his responsibilities included Citigroup's internal mergers and acquisitions activities, managing relationships with important customers and government regulators, and Citigroup's senior management development programs. He serves on many boards and is currently vice chair of the Asia Society and co-chair of the American India Foundation. He is on the advisory board of IIT Bombay, INSEAD, and the Sloan School at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Paresh Patel is CEO of Sandstone Capital, an India-focused hedge fund. Sandstone is a value-oriented investment partnership focused on long-term opportunities in India, with a preference for deep value, special situations, midcaps and complex opportunities. Sandstone Capital has an office Boston.  Prior to Sandstone Capital LLC, Paresh Patel was Managing Director of Sparta Group, the private investment office of Gururaj Deshpande, founder of Sycamore Networks.  At Sparta, Paresh invested with Desh in early-stage ventures in the US and India - including A123 Systems, Indian Lotus, Relicore and Tejas Networks.  Paresh is a graduate of Harvard Business School and Boston College.

Arvind Raghunathan is managing director and head of global arbitrage at Deutsche Bank in New York, where he manages a large part of the bank's proprietary trading and investments in global financial instruments. He has served as a consultant for a number of corporations, including IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Xerox. Today, he is actively involved in a number of non-profit organizations, serving on several advisory committees and boards. He and his wife, Sribala (Bonnie) Subramanian, lead fundraising efforts for hospitals, colleges and universities, and other charities.

Arshad Zakaria is the Chief Executive and Founder of New Vernon Capital LLC.  New Vernon Capital was founded in 2004 and has approximately $3 billion under management, with a focus on emerging markets, particularly India.   Mr. Zakaria received his B.A. degree, summa cum laude, in applied mathematics, from Harvard University in 1985. He received his M.B.A. with high distinction from Harvard Business School in 1987 where he was a Baker Scholar and a recipient of the Loeb-Rhoades Fellowship for Finance.  He is currently on the Board of the Cancer Institute of New Jersey and on the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India.