Sanjay Anandaram has more than twenty two years of experience as an entrepreneur, investor and corporate executive. As a passionate advocate of entrepreneurship, he’s a mentor, board member and occasional angel investor in startups in India and the US. He’s also involved as advisor/venture partner with early stage VC funds including a social venture fund.

Sanjay is a founding partner of JumpStartUp Venture Fund, a pioneering early stage US-India cross border VC fund set up in 2000 that invested in technology and technology enabled businesses. Prior to JumpStartUp, Sanjay co-founded Neta, a Silicon Valley VC backed internet personalization software company where he wrote the business plan, drove business development and early customer adoption till it became a part of Infoseek/Disney. Consequently, he returned to India in 1999 and started Venturekatalyst India’s first e-magazine aimed at entrepreneurs.

Earlier Sanjay spent close to a decade in Wipro (NYSE: WIT) by starting his IT career in the 80s in sales in Eastern India. Subsequently, he set up operations in Middle East and Africa, the Far East and the US for Wipro products, OEM initiatives, product engineering, system integration and corporate development respectively, involving startup and F500 companies. He was involved in the creation and establishment of several pioneering businesses and cross-border business models.

Sanjay writes and speaks frequently on startups, innovation and entrepreneurship. He writes for the Wall Street Journal (India Chief Mentor), The Financial Express and various magazines and blogs. He teaches Business Plan Workshop as visiting faculty at INSEAD business school, Singapore campus. He is a Charter member of TiE Bangalore where he co-chairs entrepreneurship acceleration and education initiatives, is a member of NASSCOM initiatives in innovation and entrepreneurship, an advisor to NSRCEL-IIMB, has been a working group member of the Indo-US Council on Entrepreneurship in Academia. He’s also member of the Expert Panel of the Technology Development Board, Dept of Science & Technology, Govt of India.