OUR SPEAKERS
Rahul Narvekar
Founder CEO
India Network, Startup Studio, India Angel Fund, Letsupp and Letsflix
An Alumnus of Harvard Business School, IIM Calcutta and ESSEC business school paris , Rahul Narvekar has had a interesting life journey so far .
Born and Bought up in the Chawls of Mumbai and studying in a small local school called Sardarni Pratap Singh Janta Vidyalaya, Rahul Leveraged his early love for reading and sheer luck in finding a Scrap Dealer , who gave him access to Fortune , Time , Newsweek magazines , into a successful multifaceted career which has been a rollercoaster ride so far .
Starting as a Ward boy in the night shift in a hospital in Mulund , to door to door sales , he has the singular distinction of being selected and then getting Expelled from the first formal entrepreneurship programme of india in 1994 , for asking too many uncomfortable questions and being a troublemaker .
The joke is that he is the ONLY entreprenuer from all the batches that have passed out of this institution .
Starting his first venture in 1994 in the advertising space , he cofounded Asia’s first interactive music channel in 1998 called Channel Oxygen in Mumbai .
It went from zero to 2 crores revenue and came back to zero within 3 years and then moving to delhi ( having been conned by his Wife , who he met online , to move to this ” Shaant ” place )
Starting from scratch again he was senior manager with Ansal Plaza for a place called District centre Janakpuri , where he built a Amphitheatre with DDA .
Having cracked a Crazy Sales deal with Radio Mirchi, he got the fastest promotion in Ansals history, moving from sr. manager to Vice President .
Having worked for various Retail Real Estate companies including DLF , Rahul Co founded www.fashionandyou.com in 2009 . It became the first luxury ecommerce company to Raise $ 8 million from Sequoia Capital , then $ 40 Million and then $ 128 Million .
In 2013 he set up www.indianroots.com with NDTV with a seed capital of Rs.84 lakhs which became a $ 85 Million company in 2 years .
In 2016, having exited this venture , rahul is now cofounder of www.scaleventures.in , a SEBI registered category 1 , angel fund of Rs.100 crores , also CEO of Sun and Sands Advisors Tokyo , a japan based firm which brings large scale japanese funding and technology to India . http://sunandsands.com/english/team/
Married to C pallavi Rao Narvekar , he has a son Rian Rao Narvekar and 3 dogs , Runs half marathons and 100 kms trailwalks . He is also the first person in the world with sleep apnea to do the Everest Base Camp trek .
A frequent speaker to corporates, campuses , and various forums including twice at the United nations , Harvard Business school and TEDX . Despite his wife C pallavi Rao having undergone about 8 surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy and other challenges , Rahul Genuinely believes that he is Ganpati’s Blessed Child and has had a truly awesome life