Prior to founding Jina in 2003, Mr. Shah was an investment professional at Trenwith Securities, where he successfully advised several Fortune 20 clients on international M&A transactions. Prior to Trenwith, Mr. Shah served as Principal at Resurgence Capital, where he led private equity investments in India and China.

Under Mr. Shah’s leadership, Jina Ventures has become a premier emerging markets firm, with an extensive track record as an advisor, investor and underwriter of private equity transactions. In 2005, Jina Ventures launched its first India-focused private equity fund, which invested in 12 Indian companies, added value through international development and completed 11 exits in less than 3 years, delivering top quartile performance. Since then, Jina Ventures has been involved in several notable special situations transactions, including secondary-directs and management-led buyouts in India. Jina is now on its second fund, the Jina Strategic Growth Fund, which invests in special situations private equity transactions in India.

Over his career, Mr. Shah has sat on the board of directors of several Indian and American companies and a variety of non-profit and start-up ventures. Mr. Shah currently sits on the board of Liners India Limited and SmartSpaces.org. He is an official contributor on Emerging Markets for CNBC and speaks regularly on panels at industry conferences (see: media).

Mr. Shah received his Bachelor of Business Administration from the George Washington University and his MBA in Corporate Finance from New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Vishal Savani is a director and CFO of Jina Ventures, responsible for portfolio management and post-investment initiatives. Over the past few years, he has worked extensively with Jina Ventures on strategic initiatives involving clients and portfolio companies including Swiss Pharma Contract Ltd, Liners India Limited and Universal Power Transformers Pte Ltd.

Previously, Mr. Savani was a Director at World Links, a World Bank spin-off focused on leveraging technology to improve global education. In addition, Mr. Savani directed World Links' India operations, launched in partnership with the World Economic Forum and financed by Accenture, JPMorganChase, and Microsoft. Before joining World Links, Mr. Savani was a consultant at Mercer Management Consulting. Mr. Savani began his career as a member of the Financial Advisory Services practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Mr. Savani holds a BA in Political Science & Diplomatic History from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Pranjul Srivastava is the Director of Business Development at Jina Ventures. Prior to joining Jina, Mr. Srivastava worked at AllianceBernstein and JPMorgan where he managed relationships with institutional clients encompassing over $50 billion AUM. In addition, he presented to clients and prospects on the firms' product offerings, its philosophies and methodologies regarding asset allocation and wealth management.

Mr. Srivastava started his career at IDEAglobal as the Business Development Manager where he devised and executed on a distribution channel strategy for the firm's independent financial market research. He developed several deep relationships with financial portals, ECNs, online banks and brokerage firms that helped grow the research business significantly.

Mr. Srivastava is a graduate from Tufts University with a double major in Economics and Biology, and has received an MBA in International Management from Thunderbird, The School of Global Management.

Mr. Bhattacharya is a Director in the team of the Indian Sub-Advisor and specializes in management buy-out transactions with expertise as an operating partner in Indian companies. Mr. Bhattacharya has over 20 years of Indian private equity experience, in both an operating and investing capacity.

Previously, Mr. Bhattacharya was an Investment Principal with Frontline Strategies, an India-focused PE fund, where he led investments in three infrastructures service companies, Tejas Networks, Krishna Saa Fabs Pvt Ltd and Shriram SEPL Composites Ltd. He also spent three years as the CFO of Infinity Ventures in India, where he oversaw investments and exits in Cognosys Ltd (a spin-out transaction), IndiaBulls (a leading financial services firm), and BrainVisa (later sold to WestBridge).

Previous to these 10 years in private equity, Mr. Bhattacharya spent 10 years in an operating role in the infrastructure services industry, with WorldTel India, Tata Teleservices, and as a financial director with IL&FS. He is a CFA and graduated from Calcutta University.

Prerak Vakharia is an associate with Jina Ventures with extensive experience in operational management of the New York office, and will lead the launch of the Jina office in Ahmedabad, India, where he will focus on deal sourcing and investment initiatives across Gujarat state.

Prior to joining the Jina team, Prerak was a member of the technical team at Ztango Inc, the nation's leading wireless messaging and multimedia solutions Company. Mr. Vakharia led technical development at Ztango (now known as RealNetworks, Inc) with international telecom clients such as SaskTel, one of the leading carriers in Canada. Prior to his tenure at Ztango, Prerak was a leading engineer at major Indian firms including Vacunair and Brady Morris. He brings to Jina Ventures a wealth of resources and relationships spanning the Indian subcontinent and Asia. Mr. Vakharia received his mechanical engineering degree from the Nirma University in Ahmedabad India.

Sachin is an Associate at Jina Ventures based in Mumbai and handles investment analysis and appraisals along with pre - investment industry / sector identification and analysis.

Prior to joining Jina Ventures, Sachin was a part of a boutique investment bank, Indus Advisors, where he has handled deal execution for transactions in Fund Raising and M&A and has gained wide experience in business analysis & planning, valuation & financial modeling and industry / sector specific analysis. He has handled deals across varied sectors that include Education, Hospitality, Digital OOH, Technology and Agri Products. Prior to Indus, he had a stint at Godrej & Boyce where he handled sales & marketing for the entire product range of forklifts. Sachin is a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) from the Pune University, India and has done his MBA from the Mumbai University.

Paul Richter
OPERATING PARTNER - LIFE SCIENCES

Mr. Richter is the life sciences industry head of Jina Ventures and leads all sourcing, development and execution functions across the industry. Previously, Paul was responsible for $1 billion dollars in urban development and environmental restoration for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. He evaluated pharmacology, alternative energy, environmental projects for Exxon Corporation, Environmental Defense Fund, WHEB Ventures, and Privileged Discovery Partners. Paul has worked extensively with life science ventures based in Canada, United States, India, United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Russian Federation, and Spain. Over the past few years, Mr. Richter has advised and worked with over 15 major pharmaceutical companies in their drug co-development, M&A and financing initiatives

Mr. Richter was awarded his B.S., Sigma Xi, in Biology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and his B.S., summa cum laude, in Management Science from Kean University.

In his last corporate position, Sanjeev was Director of Marketing & Planning for Magna Powertrain, part of the $23B Magna group, located in Detroit. Prior to this he was Director of Marketing, Strategic Planning and Asian Sales for New Venture Gear, a $2B joint venture between DaimlerChrysler & General Motors. He holds six U.S. patents and has several publications to his credit. Sanjeev began his career in 1984 with Chrysler Corporation. He is currently Senior Advisor to Chanin Capital Partners/Duff and Phelps, a $250m Investment Bank with offices worldwide. As a pro-bono advisor, Sanjeev is a member of the Advisory Board of the Marketing Department at Oakland University's School of Business in Auburn Hills, Michigan.

Sanjeev has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, and a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. He has attended Executive Development Programs at Cornell, MIT and Wharton Business School.

Mr. Hosokawa is a senior advisor of Jina Ventures by virtue of his leadership and anchor investment in Jina Fund I. With over 25 years of experience in the finance industry, Mr. Hosokawa brings tremendous expertise in private equity, institutional investing, merchant banking and equities trading. Over the past few years, Mr. Hosokawa has managed the private wealth of prominent families in Japan.

Prior to founding HWL Private Limited and joining Jina Ventures as an LP affiliate and advisor, Mr. Hosokawa was a head equity trader at Credit Suisse First Boston in their Tokyo Office. At CSFB, he was responsible for managing the accounts of several major Japanese pension funds and institutions. Prior to this, Mr. Hosokawa was the Head of Trading in the Tokyo branch of E*Trade Institutional Securities (formerly Tiedemann International Research). His career credits also include "Head of Japan Desk" for Merrill Lynch London, an executive position at Citibank Private Bank and a Head Trader for the Nichimen Corporation.

Mr. Hosokawa received his MBA from NYU Stern and Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Osaka.

Adam Brandenburger is a senior strategic advisor for Jina Ventures. Mr. Brandenburger is currently the J.P. Valles Professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University, and was voted Stern MBA Professor of the Year in 2006. Prior to joining Stern, he held the Class of 1958 Professorship at Harvard Business School.

Adam is an authority on game theory and its application to business strategy. His book Co-opetition (with Barry Nalebuff, Doubleday, 1996) is used by businesses as a guide to strategy in the information economy, and has been translated into more than a dozen languages.  Born in London, England, Adam received his B.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Cambridge.
He was a Harkness Fellow from 1983 to 1985.

Rudy was previously the founding member and head of the Novartis Venture Fund in Basel, Switzerland for over ten years. He had previously held a range of positions in the management of research and development at Ciba-Geigy (today Novartis). Gygax holds a PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Basel, Switzerland, and has completed a post-doctorate research fellowship at Stanford University, USA. He is advisory board member of several Swiss associations active in the field of biotechnology, and is or has been a member or observer of the board of directors of Biocure, Biofisica, Cell-n-Tech, Chemovation, Covagen, Pearltec, Santhera and Synphabase, among others. Rudy will assist the Fund with sourcing investments and managing its life science portfolio in India. Rudy will play an active yet part-time role advising on sourcing transactions and working with specific Portfolio Companies.