THE DAKSHANA COMMUNITY

Ajay Desai

Desai graduated from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Prior to attending medical school, Desai worked for IBM as an electrical engineer. He completed his residency in Radiation Oncology at State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City. Desai has received specialized training in brachytherapy (LDR & HDR) and IMRT.

Desai is board-certified in radiation oncology and as a medical examiner. He’s a member of the American Society of Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology, American College of Radiation Oncology, the New York Roentgen Society, and the American Medical Association. He has a licence to practice medicine in California, Florida, and New York.

He and his wife Komal, a psychiatrist, have two children.

Amitabh Singhi

He graduated with a B.Sc. in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Ruyintan (Ron) E. Mehta

Mehta is a 1970 alumni of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay with a Bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering. He received advanced engineering degrees in Chemical Engineering and Engineering Administration from University of Connecticut and University of Utah respectively.

Mehta is now fully retired and is passionate in giving back to several educational and social causes in India. Mehta was the immediate Past President of IIT Bombay Heritage Foundation and currently serves as President of IIT Gandhinagar Foundation. He is the Executive Director of Wheels India Niswarth (WIN) Foundation – a non profit that works in the field of  Water & Sanitation and Maternal & Child Health issues in India. Mehta is also a Board Member and Co-Chair of Water with an NGO called Wheels Global Foundation founded by alumni of IITs in the US to provide technology based philanthropic solutions in Water (W), Health (H), Education (E), Energy (E), Livelihoods (L) and Sustainability (S) in India.

Sunil Bhargava

In the early part of his career, Bhargava worked at Xerox PARC and HP on language subsystems and then joined Oracle, where he was centrally involved in the development of Oracle 7, Oracle 8i, and Oracle Application Server. In 1998, he was part of the founding team at Webvan as Vice President of technology and helped put together a team and a service that successfully rolled out to many cities. In 2002, Bhargava cofounded Business Signatures Corporation. As VP of Strategy, he played a key role in every aspect of the business from defining the product, hiring the team, selling, marketing, and fund-raising to seeing it through to a successful acquisition by Entrust in 2006.

Bhargava also worked with the CEOs of a number of start-ups very early in their formation to help them take the seeds of technology or business innovation and make them viable businesses.

He holds a B.S.E.E. from Indian Institute of Technology (Chennai), an M.S. degree in computer science from Rice University in Houston, Texas, USA, and an M.S. degree in management from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area with his family.

V. Prem Watsa

In 1985 Prem took control of Markel Financial which was controlled by the Virginia based Markel family. In 1987 he then reorganized and renamed it Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited. He has served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer since its inception.

Since 1985, Fairfax has compounded book value and stock price by about 19%. Fairfax has total assets of approximately US$50 billion, revenues of approximately US$12 billion and common shareholders’ equity of approximately US$11 billion. The company is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

He holds a Bachelors Degree in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India and obtained his MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. He is also a Chartered Financial Analyst. He holds an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Western Ontario, an Honorary Doctorate of Sacred Letters from Wycliff College of the University of Toronto and an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Tyndale College.

He is a member of the Sick Children’s Hospital Foundation and is Chairman of their Investment Committee, member of the Advisory Board for the Richard Ivey School of Business, member of the Board of Directors of the Royal Ontario Museum Foundation, Lead Director on the Board of Blackberry and Chairman of the Investment Committee of St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Toronto. He is on the Board of Horatio Alger Association U.S. and President of Horatio Alger Association of Canada.  He is Chairman of Fairfax India.  He was formerly Chancellor of the University of Waterloo and on the Boards of the Bank of Ireland and of ICICI Bank.  He is a recipient of the Order of Canada.

Vinay Karle

  Prior to that, Vinay was a Capital Markets Strategist and a Fixed Income Portfolio Manager at a boutique Investment Bank.

Vinay’s experience spans many industries and functions, including investment banking, enterprise software, pharmaceutical, supply chain, telecommunication, education, and hedge funds. During his career, he has led many strategic initiatives and managed global software development teams. His functional responsibilities included research and development, professional services, strategic account management (sales), and fund-raising for technology startups.

Vinay has been active in the IIT alumni community as a volunteer for almost a decade now and has served on many non-profits/NGOs related to IIT alumni. He also actively participates in the global community through various philanthropic activities in the United States as well as in India. He works with Computers for Youth as a volunteer and brand ambassador.

He visits JNVs as a Dakshana representative to oversee operations and to encourage Dakshana scholars. Vinay is actively involved in improving educational standards at Jalkot Zilla Parishad school. In 2007, Jalkot village administration (Grampanchayat) conferred its highest civilian award, Jalkot Bhushan, on Vinay, the youngest member of the village community to receive this award, for his contributions.

He received his bachelor’s degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, in 1996 and his master’s degree from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, in 1999. During his master’s research, Vinay developed artificial intelligence-based techniques to solve complex routing and scheduling problems.