our purpose

Our core purpose is to participate in "Nation Building", creating employers, NOT employees, and driving the entrepreneurial spirit of India.

our vision

Our vision is to become a key influencer in the start-up ecosystem, actively supporting innovative tech companies, building sustainable, scalable businesses that impact the entrepreneurial space.

our mission

Our mission is to impact 1000 start-ups over 7 to 8 years, with structured and quality coaching, mentoring and monitoring across sectors, positively impacting their survival and success outcomes; igniting them to solve real problems with scale.
founders

world class business expertise

Pankaj Thakkar black and white

Pankaj Thakar

Pankaj is a tech evangelist with specialization in Digital MediaStrategies, Digital Marketing, Online Consumer Behavior and BigData Applications & Analytics. In his various C-level roles and as the founder of multiple start-ups globally, he has built, advised and transformed both corporate and start-up companies to become highly successful. Pankaj worked with many reputed companies like HCL Limited, India Telecom Ltd, Atlas TelecomLtd etc., Value First Media Ltd.. He has created Global Start-ups like Consilnet Inc. based out of Silicon Valley USA and recently Cellcast Interactive which he successfully exited. All these companies have been in technology and consumer space.

Pankaj Thakkar
Syed Safawi black and white

Syed Safawi

Syed Safawi, Co-founder, comes with almost three decades of leadership experience, with two decades growing and transforming companies in India and outside in consumer goods, beverages, telecom, infra and beauty & wellness. An Investor in technology platforms and on several Boards and Advisory Boards, he educates over ten thousand underprivileged children through his E&H Foundation. He has served companies like Coca-Cola, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communication, Viom Networks (A Tata-Tele JV), VLCC etc. with specialising in turning companies around with large profitability, fundraising and exits. Syed was the CEO of Viom Networks, a TATA-SREI-PE joint venture, where American Tower Corporation closed the acquisition of a 51% controlling ownership in 2016, thus figuring among the top-10 inbound M&A deals in India ever, across sectors.

Syed Safawi
Rajat Jain black and white

Rajat Jain

A Postgraduate from IIM, Ahmedabad and B Tech from IIT, Delhi,Rajat Jain is a Founder Director of PadUp Ventures, a Tech Start-ups Incubator, focusing on providing deep mentoring and incubation services to early stage tech companies as well as other Incubators in India and helping them grow successfully to the next level and to Series A funding.

Rajat is a Non-Executive Director on the Boards of TIM Delhi Airport Advertising (TIMDAA), a JV between TIM and the GMR group, Securenow TechServices Pvt Ltd, a PE funded InsureTech company and Kaleidoscope Events Pvt Ltd, a pureplay marketing services firm focused on creative solutions driven by Events. Till recently, he was on the Board of Xerox India and was also its Managing Director.

Rajat Jain
Divyendu Kumar black and white

Divyendu Kumar

Divyendu Kumar has had more than three decades of experience in the Indian as well as international business world. Till recently, for about a decade, he was the Managing Director of a multi-billion US Dollar, 3,500 employee-strong automotive sales, marketing, servicing, financing & leasing, and retailing business with a multi-country footprint in the Middle East, managing globally leading franchise brands as well as own brands. Prior to that, he was closely associated with the Tata Group of India, and was the Head, International Business for Passenger Cars at Tata Motors for a number of years before relocating to the Middle East. Recently, he has become actively involved in the business start-up scene, having contributed to the formation of an incubation and accelerator space, called the ASPIRE, at Kent Business School in the United Kingdom and having encouraged budding entrepreneurs with early stage investments.

Divyendu Kumar

Saumyajit Guha

Saumyajit Guha holds an MBA in Entrepreneurship & Innovation from Exeter University and have over 18+ years of experience with recognized proficiency in Startup ecosystem development, Investment management, Angel investing, Startup acceleration & incubation, Incubator management, Research & analysis, Team management, Process migration, Operations, Business analysis.

He is currently working for PadUp ventures as Vice President. Before that he was a faculty member at IMT Ghaziabad in the area of Strategy Innovation and Entrepreneurship and was responsible for the Incubator and E Cell of IMT Ghaziabad.

Prior to joining IMT, he was heading the India operations of Jaarvis Accelerator as Principal. Previous to this he was leading Calcutta Angels Network as the COO. He has also worked at Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) and was responsible for establish- ing the incubation centre IIMCIP. He has also worked at the Start Up Incubator at IIT, Kharagpur.

Pankaj Thakkar

Pankaj Thakar

Pankaj is a tech evangelist with specialization in Digital MediaStrategies, Digital Marketing, Online Consumer Behavior and BigData Applications & Analytics. In his various C-level roles and as the founder of multiple start-ups globally, he has built, advised and transformed both corporate and start-up companies to become highly successful. Pankaj worked with many reputed companies like HCL Limited, India Telecom Ltd, Atlas TelecomLtd etc, Value First Media Ltd. He has created Global Start-ups like Consilnet Inc. based out of Silicon Valley USA and recently Cellcast Interactive which he successfully exited. All these companies have been in technology and consumer space.

Syed Safawi

Syed Safawi, Co-founder, comes with almost three decades of leadership experience, with two decades growing and transforming companies in India and outside in consumer goods, beverages, telecom, infra and beauty & wellness. An Investor in technology platforms and on several Boards and Advisory Boards, he educates over ten thousand underprivileged children through his E&H Foundation. He has served companies like Coca-Cola, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communication, Viom Networks (A Tata-Tele JV), VLCC etc. with specialising in turning companies around with large profitability, fundraising and exits. Syed was the CEO of Viom Networks, a TATA-SREI-PE joint venture, where American Tower Corporation closed the acquisition of a 51% controlling ownership in 2016, thus figuring among the top-10 inbound M&A deals in India ever, across sectors.

Syed Safawi
Rajat Jain

Rajat Jain

A Postgraduate from IIM, Ahmedabad and B Tech from IIT, Delhi,Rajat Jain is a Founder Director of PadUp Ventures, a Tech Start-ups Incubator, focusing on providing deep mentoring and incubation services to early stage tech companies as well as other Incubators in India and helping them grow successfully to the next level and to Series A funding.

Rajat is a Non-Executive Director on the Boards of TIM Delhi Airport Advertising (TIMDAA), a JV between TIM and the GMR group, Securenow TechServices Pvt Ltd, a PE funded InsureTech company and Kaleidoscope Events Pvt Ltd, a pureplay marketing services firm focused on creative solutions driven by Events. Till recently, he was on the Board of Xerox India and was also its Managing Director.

Divyendu Kumar

Divyendu Kumar has had more than three decades of experience in the Indian as well as international business world. Till recently, for about a decade, he was the Managing Director of a multi-billion US Dollar, 3,500 employee-strong automotive sales, marketing, servicing, financing & leasing, and retailing business with a multi-country footprint in the Middle East, managing globally leading franchise brands as well as own brands. Prior to that, he was closely associated with the Tata Group of India, and was the Head, International Business for Passenger Cars at Tata Motors for a number of years before relocating to the Middle East. Recently, he has become actively involved in the business start-up scene, having contributed to the formation of an incubation and accelerator space, called the ASPIRE, at Kent Business School in the United Kingdom and having encouraged budding entrepreneurs with early stage investments.

Divyendu Kumar
Super mentors

supermentors

This is a dedicated group of mentors who will mentor the startups while they follow The PadUp Way, starting from Bootcamp. These highly qualified and trained supermentors will deliver group mentoring as well as one-on-one mentoring to help the startups achieve their goals.

expert mentors

combining industry experts with corporate excellence

Using industry professionals as expert mentors, combined with seasoned corporate executives, proves an incubation and acceleration program like no other.

community

friends of padup (FoP)

Friends of PadUp was created in 2018 and has been expanding ever since. This is a closed group of more than 60 like-minded senior individuals, and growing, with rich experience and knowledge in different areas of business, government, education, technology, incubation, start-up ecosystem etc and even life in general.

Learn More