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Board of Directors

Raj Nair

Raj Nair

Chairman

Raj has over 40 years of experience as a doer-manager, entrepreneur, advisor and mentor. This has given him exposure across functional areas, across industries and across countries.

In his current role, Raj serves as – Chairman: Avalon Consulting, AGR Knowledge and Germinait Solutions Pvt Ltd.

As a strategy consultant, Raj has helped companies across diverse industries in India, USA, Europe, and the Middle East to develop strategies, align strategy to vision, grow in competitive markets, restructure to make companies more customer focused etc.

After working in consumer durables marketing at Murphy and later as a Merchant Banker with Grindlays Bank for 6 years, he set up a Marketing Research and Advisory firm and followed that up with a Management Consulting company. He, thereafter, co-founded a very successful Analytics company in 2000. In 2008, seeing the opportunity in text analytics with the advent of Social Media, he founded a technology company that would create IT products that help analyse what people are saying in the digital world.

Raj is an Engineering graduate from IIT, Bombay and a Post-Graduate in Business Management, from IIM, Ahmedabad. He also holds a degree in General Law from the University of Mumbai.

Sridhar Venkiteswaran

Sridhar Venkiteswaran

Director

Sridhar has over twenty years of experience as a management consultant, working with clients in India and the Middle East on strategy and performance related engagements across businesses in the manufacturing and services sectors, with particular focus on automotive and automotive components, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, chemicals and business to business services.

He has built lasting relationships with clients through successful engagements that have delivered substantial value. He has provided and helped implement solutions in areas of business strategy, performance improvement, supply chain optimisation, partner identification and sales & marketing. Sridhar also has significant experience in franchising model development and management, having developed and implemented growth strategies through franchising across a range of industries. Sridhar has also done extensive work evaluating the relative economics of businesses across the two hottest emerging markets – India and China – for a number of Indian and International entities. He was part of the CII Task Force on China, constituted to develop the China engagement strategy and lead the development of a report which was the basis of a number of actions at a policy level from India. He is a regular speaker at various conferences organised by CII, ACMA and other National and Industry Level Associations and serves on the Board of listed and unlisted companies as an Independent Director

Sridhar holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the Mumbai University and an MBA from one of India’s leading business schools, Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai.

Rishikesh Deshpande

Rishikesh Deshpande

Whole Time Director & CEO

With over 27 years of experience, Rishikesh Deshpande is a C-level Business Executive with proven excellence in enabling holistic, sustainable business growth, strengthening organizational foundations, and improving processes to drive results. He specializes in cross-border business expansion, business planning, establishing supply chains and distribution networks, and outsourcing.

Over the years, he has led companies to grow from small divisions to successful independent entities with over hundreds of employees. With his ‘solution-focused, customer-first’ style of leadership, Rishikesh enabled the right business and operations environment in organizations to gain customers’ trust, who in turn increasingly progressed from ‘ad-hoc projects’ to ‘annuity process driven’ engagements.

In early 2020, Rishikesh had the privilege of accompanying the Honorable, former President of India, Mr. Ram Nath Kovind, as part of his delegation to several countries to promote cross border business expansion.

As the CEO of Avalon Global Research, Rishikesh is responsible for growing the business sustainably, building the organizational culture that encourages entrepreneurial growth, and directing the company to align with the vision of the business outlined by the shareholders. He has also successfully created and developed a platform for cross-border partner search and connect that has found considerable traction in select countries and industries.

Prior to his stint in Avalon, he has had senior leadership roles at various organizations in consulting, outsourcing, and media sectors.

Management Team

Rishikesh Deshpande

Rishikesh Deshpande

Whole Time Director & CEO

With over 27 years of experience, Rishikesh Deshpande is a C-level Business Executive with proven excellence in enabling holistic, sustainable business growth, strengthening organizational foundations, and improving processes to drive results. He specializes in cross-border business expansion, business planning, establishing supply chains and distribution networks, and outsourcing.

Over the years, he has led companies to grow from small divisions to successful independent entities with over hundreds of employees. With his ‘solution-focused, customer-first’ style of leadership, Rishikesh enabled the right business and operations environment in organizations to gain customers’ trust, who in turn increasingly progressed from ‘ad-hoc projects’ to ‘annuity process driven’ engagements.

In early 2020, Rishikesh had the privilege of accompanying the Honorable, former President of India, Mr. Ram Nath Kovind, as part of his delegation to several countries to promote cross border business expansion.

As the CEO of Avalon Global Research, Rishikesh is responsible for growing the business sustainably, building the organizational culture that encourages entrepreneurial growth, and directing the company to align with the vision of the business outlined by the shareholders. He has also successfully created and developed a platform for cross-border partner search and connect that has found considerable traction in select countries and industries.

Prior to his stint in Avalon, he has had senior leadership roles at various organizations in consulting, outsourcing, and media sectors.

Radhakrishnan-R

Radhakrishnan R

Executive Vice President

With a career spanning about 29 years in the research domain, of which 22 years have been in senior management positions, Radhakrishnan Rajaram has extensive experience in working in start-up or greenfield environment. He has proven expertise in navigating through unchartered territories to scale business and build high-performance work culture and teams, especially in the human-centric research sector.

As Executive Vice President at Avalon Global Research, Radhakrishnan oversees the scale up of the Consumer Insights and Investment Research practices. These practices have emerged in a short period as among the largest business units within Avalon. He is adept at successfully designing and delivering research solutions while building client relationships and managing costs and business profitability.

Over the years, Radhakrishnan has played a pivotal role in various types of research start-ups, building processes that take organizations to the next growth stages. He is focused on developing highly responsive client-focused teams that believe in the ethos of striking the right work-life balance.

R-Subramaniam

R Subramaniam

Executive Vice President

Subramaniam Ramanathan is a veteran in business research and consulting with over 30 years of rich experience. He is considered an expert in global and Indian market research, management consulting, and business strategy across automotive, chemicals and petrochemicals, infrastructure, and financial services.

Subramaniam plays a key leadership role in the business research division of AGR Knowledge as the Executive Vice President. He leads the division to develop high quality, bespoke research and trackers for corporates, management consultants, and the financial community in India and abroad.

Earlier, he worked as Associate Vice President at Avalon Consulting for about 10 years, specializing in marketing research, strategy development and performance improvement consulting services for manufacturing and services sectors.

Shubham Chatterjee

Shubham Chatterjee

Vice President

As a Business Consultant with over 22 years’ experience, Shubham Chatterjee works with blue-chip corporations, investor groups, and government trade bodies to assess market opportunities and support client teams to capitalise on the opportunity through actionable insights.

In his current role as Vice President, Shubham leads the Market insights and Business activation practice for Automotive and Engineering domains. Prior to AGR, he spearheaded Business development for a Danish consulting firm; Valcon. In 2011, Shubham started his entrepreneurial venture Presilium (originally, Invensis Management Consultants) that offered bespoke Business consulting services to Corporations and MSMEs in India and Middle East. During his stint with Netscribes he was in-charge of the Business Research & Analytics division with responsibility of managing client relations and building the research practice.

Ankur Rastogi

Ankur Rastogi

Vice President

Ankur Rastogi is a seasoned management consulting and business research professional with more than 15 years of experience. He focuses on creating value for clients, mainly in the metals, minerals, mining and energy verticals.

Over the years, he has conducted multiple research studies across the metals value chain: starting from raw materials to semi-finished and finished products, and recycled materials. Ankur has significant exposure to the domestic as well as global markets. As Vice President, Ankur drives business activities, insight generation, solution development, and customer engagement as the P&L head of the Metals, Minerals & Mining practice at Avalon Global Research.

Ankur also manages the Business Analytics practise that creates automated dashboards using PowerBI, Python, SharePoint, and PowerApps to support CXOs in decision making.

Bhasker C

Bhasker Canagaradjou

Vice President

With over 20 years of experience across corporate strategy and business consulting services, Bhasker Canagaradjou is a strategic advisor to several Fortune 500 companies and marquee startups. As a growth advisory professional, Bhasker works closely with clients across multiple industries, including banking and financial services, consumer goods, logistics, industrial goods, automotive and healthcare, in North America, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific.

Bhasker advises senior executives and CXOs on successful growth initiatives, meaningful process improvements and impactful strategies for business, geography expansion, branding, and partner diligence.

As part of Avalon Global Research’s senior leadership team, Bhasker is responsible for the practice’s strategic direction and business scale up. He looks after its revenue acceleration, operational execution, GTM approach, and brand marketing. As Vice President, Bhasker leads the business sales pursuits, client relationship development, and organizational competency development and delivery for Avalon Global Research.

Earlier, Bhasker headed the advisory operations of Ipsos Strategy3 India and collaborated with Ipsos India senior management and Ipsos global strategy team to drive the growth of its consulting business in B2B and B2C sectors. Prior to that, Bhasker led the Business Research practice for Aranca.

Divesh Khemani

Divesh Khemani

Vice President

With over 14 years of experience in Market and Technology Research, Divesh Khemani is a specialist in conducting customized business and market research analysis for various industries, sectors and business divisions to enable seamlessly functioning processes that yield results.

Over the years, Divesh has worked on numerous research assignments on chemicals, energy logistics & pharmaceuticals, executed techno-economic feasibility studies on chemicals, specialty chemicals & medical devices and successfully delivered CI projects in chemical, energy & pharmaceuticals, while acquiring new clients.

As Director at Avalon Global Research, Divesh is responsible for the P&L/revenue targets and profitability of the division he is part of. He manages key accounts while identifying scope for business development and leads a team of project managers and analysts to execute projects with a complete focus on ensuring customer delight.

Suyog Keluskar

Suyog Keluskar

Vice President

Encouraged by the knowledge and motivated by the challenges abound in the research industry, Suyog Keluskar works closely with clients to help them develop a better understanding of their target landscape across markets, audience, competition, and segments.

Suyog is a result-oriented, award-winning professional with over 15 years of experience in B2B/B2C Market research, Customer insights, Customer centricity, Business consulting, and Net Promoter Score across diverse industry sectors.

In his current role as Director, he leads a specialized team for Customer Insights, Customer Satisfaction/Loyalty (POSAT/NPS) and Customer Experience Mapping practice at Avalon Global Research. His team empowers the clients to gain actionable insights, undertake strategic initiatives, develop market entry plans, and achieve objectives with in-depth business and consumer research.

Prior to Avalon Global Research, he supervised the entire lifecycle of research reports and led a team of research practice in Electronics, Semiconductor, and ICT domain at Future Market Insights. Earlier, he helped clients across industry sectors in market entry, expansion, partner identification, competitive analysis, market sizing, industry insights, and NPS as part of market research and consulting team at D&B Tangram Advisory Services and various other business consulting and advisory firms. With more than 5 years in MBA/PGDM education, Suyog is also associated with leading Business Schools as a visiting faculty.