Leadership

Co-Founder & CEO

Ganesh Gopalan

Ganesh’s responsibilities span Sales, Marketing, HR, and Finance. He has over 25 years of Technology leadership and Marketing experience in companies such as Texas Instruments and IBM. Gnani’s raison d’être was the result of his desire to build a deep tech company from India. He passionately believes in the vision of Indian tech companies competing in the global market.

His hobbies include playing Tennis/Cricket and likes reading science fiction. Ganesh holds an MBA in Marketing and Technology from ISB.

Co-Founder & CTO

Ananth Nagaraj

Ananth is responsible for Technology, Customer Engagement, Product Management & delivery. He has over 12 years of experience including leading Signal Processing and 4G teams in Texas Instruments and Kyocera. Ananth’s vision is to make information accessible to a large diverse population in vernacular and simplify human-machine interaction through Speech Recognition technologies. He believes technology should make our life easier and is an advocate of Conversational AI and its role in enterprise automation.

Ananth loves exploring the diversity of India through travel and is a Deep tech enthusiast. He holds a bachelor’s in engineering.

VP - Partnerships & BD

Neelesh Bam

Neelesh leads the Business development and partnerships functions. In this role, he is developing new customer segments in India and globally and drives engagements with strategic partners to address the growing needs of Conversational AI-based automation objectives.

His experience spans diverse industries – from cybersecurity and semiconductors to digital payments. He has held leadership positions in P&L roles, Product Marketing, strategic partnerships development, and new product launches. In his earlier roles covering India and JAPAC, he has worked with Wipro, Texas Instruments, Honeywell, and Shopclues.

His recent stint has been as an entrepreneur, being a co-founder of Momoe (one of India’s earliest mobile payments companies).

His interests include reading on a variety of subjects and keeping abreast of new technologies. He is a space and science enthusiast and loves travelling and spending time with family. Neelesh graduated from IIT Kanpur and is an MBA from IIM Lucknow and has won several awards for innovation and design.

VP - Engineering

Bharath Shankar

Bharath leads the designing and architecture of the AI and ML solutions at Gnani.ai. He believes in demonstrating leadership through management and mentorship. His past experiences include being the advisory engineer at IBM and holding leadership positions for 11 years at IBM India Systems Development Labs, Cognitive Systems group.

Being a gadget freak, he keenly follows all the latest tech advancements in any field. His hobbies include playing chess and travelling. He graduated as a computer science engineer from VTU and has two patents in the field of computer networking and distributed systems.

CRO

Sanjay Pai

Sales & Business development leader in Enterprise communication. Ex-India head Genesys – Lead as managing director & leadership sales roles across Asia Pacific.

Board Advisor

Lakshmi Narayanan

Lakshmi Narayanan was elected as the President in March 1998, was appointed as its Chief Executive Officer on December 22, 2003, and serves as a Director. Mr. Narayanan served as the Chief Operating Officer of Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. from March 1998 to December 2003.

He joined the Indian subsidiary of Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. as Chief Technology Officer in 1994 and was elected President of the subsidiary on January 1, 1996. Prior to joining Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., from 1975 to 1994 Mr. Narayanan was the regional head of Tata Consultancy Services, a large consulting and software services company located in India.

Mr. Narayanan holds a Bachelor of Science degree, a Master of Science degree and a Master of Business Administration degree from the Indian Institute of Science.

Board Advisor

Mahesh Ramachandran

Mahesh Ramachandran is a successful Serial and Social Entrepreneur turned investor. Mahesh is an angel investor, mentor, independent director supporting innovative startups, and helps build the ecosystem. He is a distinguished Sloan Fellow of London Business School.

Mahesh is a Leadership Council and Programme Management Group member of FinBlue – FinTech Centre of Excellence set up by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India at STPI, Chennai. Mahesh is the founder of Commonwealth Inclusive Growth Services Ltd which operates in over 30,000 locations across 27 states in India.

​He brings with him several decades of rich & varied experience in the field of Entrepreneurship, Investing, FinTech, Rural Marketing, Digital Transformation, Leadership, Mentoring & Governance. Mahesh Ramachandran’s entrepreneurial ventures include peer to peer foreign exchange portal, targeted advertising, and digital payment solution, and financial inclusion.

Hailing from Thanjavur, South India, he loves Coffee, Carnatic Music, and Comics.