Top 0 Asian Stars in UK Tech - JOOMAG version Top 100 Asian Stars in UK Tech 2015 | Page 42

Top 100 Asian Stars in UK Tech 2015

Aneesh Varma
Co-Founder - Aire
Aneesh Varma is Co-Founder at Aire, an alternate credit score for people who are incorrectly
classified because they have no credit history. The aim is to enable them access to financial
products. Aire has received $1.4 million in funding and is a TechStars company. Educated as an
engineer at Lehigh University with second degree in Quantitative Finance, Aneesh previously
co-founded FabriQate, an enterprise technology company. Prior to that he had experience in
corporate finance for speciality finance & fintech. He was recognised as European Commission’s
Entrepreneur of the Year 2014 nominee and British Council’s 2009 Young Entrepreneur.

Salim Virani
Partner - Founder Centric
Salim Virani is an entrepreneur, consultant and expert on lean startup methodologies who is
currently a Partner at Founder-Centric that delivers ongoing, high-calibre startup support to
early-stage founders through on-demand training, mentoring and peer-advisory formats. He is
also Lecturer & Entrepreneur-In-Residence for the UCL Advances ambitious Masters programme
in Technology Entrepreneurship. Salim is the creator of Leancamp which he founded in 2010
in an event format to bring multiple industries together around entrepreneurial and design
methods to encourage businesses get to market faster. Salim holds a Bachelor’s degree
in Computer Science from the Simon Fraser University in Canada and started his career as
a senior php developer before moving on to become a systems analyst. He was Director of
Digital Media at J Walter Thompson serving clients such as Nestle, Kraft, Helene Curtis, Pfizer,
Ford, Western Union, Unilever and Merrill Lynch before becoming the Founding Director at
Hotelicom (iWebConnect) which specialised in on-site, guest-facing technical amenities, such
as business centres and information screens, for hotels and hostels.

Krishna Visvanathan
Managing Partner, DFJ Esprit LLP
Krishna Visvanathan who is Managing Partner at venture capital firm DFJ Esprit LLP has been
actively engaged in international startups and investing for over 15 years. Krishna joined DFJ
Esprit in 2009 and focuses primarily on Internet, mobile and networking related businesses
where he is responsible for the company’s investments in Achica, Qosmos, Radium One,
Netronome Systems, Cambridge Semiconductor, Light Blue Optics, MediaFed, and TrustPilot.
Krishna also led DFJ Esprit’s investments in Icera (acquired by Nvidia) and The Cloud Networks
(acquired by BskyB). Prior to joining DFJ Esprit, Krishna spent ten years with 3i’s Technology
Venture Capital team where he was responsible for investments in Blue Lithium Inc (acquired
by Yahoo!), Ezurio (acquired by Laird), Ubinetics (acquired by CSR plc and Aeroflex Inc), Fastnet
Systems (acquired by Redstone plc) and BTN Ltd (acquired by C&W plc). He started his career at
Ernst & Young before founding Optika Fibre Technologies, a display technology startup based
in SE Asia. He is a Management Sciences graduate of The University of Manchester Institute of
Science and Technology.

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