Who am I?

I am a Stanford-trained entrepreneur passionate about reimagining traditional systems through technology and purpose-driven execution. I founded Ivies Chase You, a 1:1 mentorship platform that has helped over 30,000 students build meaningful, personalized college journeys. I also created HireScout, an AI-powered tool that automates early-stage interviews for client-facing roles, making quality hiring more accessible to SMBs.

Alongside my ventures, I have worked in M&A and private equity at FOCUS Investment Banking and Bertram Capital, focusing on sourcing strategy and investment theses. I am also an active thought leader on the future of work and education, having spoken at 15+ summits with a cumulative audience of over 30,000.

Outside the boardroom, I’m equally drawn to grassroots impact – like designing a conservation dome to help restore native sparrow populations in urban Mumbai. I thrive at the intersection of grit, systems thinking, and long-term impact.

My journey

My blockchain journey has three components to it: industry experience, thought leadership and research:

Industry experience

• Co-founded Ivies Chase You as India’s first student brand-building and mentorship firm. We provide hyper-specific guidance that helps high school and college students explore interests beyond academics.
• Our cohort now includea over 30,000 students in India, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Singapore and Europe.
• We have a team of talented mentors from top Indian institutes including IIT, IIM, IISc and BITS that work with our students 1:1.

• HireScout is an AI recruiting platform that automates first round interviews by conducting adaptive telephonic conversations with potential candidates.
• Recruiters can specify key skills of interests and the platform with adaptively ask questions that probe into the candidates experience in that space.
• So far, we have conducted 750+ interviews across 6 pilot companies resulting in 8 direct hires.

• Worked with Abe Garver, MD and MSP Team Leader, to originate middle-market M&A deals for outsourched IT providers (MSPs).
• I spearheaded the development of ‘MSP Market Maker’, an industry first platform that mapped 4500+ MSPs across the US with data on team size, revenue and vertical specialization. The platform was debuted at ConnectWise IT Nation Connect 2023, where I presented the same to 500+ owner operators.
• MSP Market Maker now has over 300 mid to large size MSPs as users, which use the platform to discover, engage and acquire M&A targets.

• Supported deal origination and diligence at Bertram Capital, a middle market Private Equity firm deploying its fourth fund of $940M.
• Built Bertram’s cybersecurity thesis by creating a go-to-market plan for a $100M – $200M platform in this space.
• This included evaluating sub sectors, leading outreach to 30+ thesis target companies and having one reach due diligence.

• Liquid: an instant liquidity platform that allows users to exchange 1000+ cryptocurrencies for fiat money (dollars) in under 20 seconds.
• Co-founded with five entrepreneurs from Dubai & Canada to interlink fiat & crypto economies.
• Selected in top 15 startups of 500 global entries in The Blockchain Competition, Zug 2018.
• Minimum Viable Product (MVP) rollout: early 2020. Public whitepaper available.

Liquid’s Whitepaper can be found here.

• The Partnerships: strategic consulting company providing consultancy services to clients in fields ranging from finance & real estate to technology.
• On board of experts as a FinTech advisor since March 2018.
• Work directly with MD, Mr. Tanvir Shah (a Harvard Instructor). Advise clients on how tech like Blockchain and AI can be integrated into their workflow in unique and sustainable ways.

My Partnerships profile can be found here.

• Worked on backend Ethereum and Hyperledger projects, including the development of consumer-facing, white-labelled solutions.Led a team of developers to write secure code that is production ready.
• Architected complex blockchain applications that fully utilize the modular nature of Hyperledger Fabric.
• Pitched PoCs that showcase the flexibility and accountability of blockchain solutions to SMEs clients.

My Fortress profile can be found here.

• Frequent columnist on several famous cryptocurrency websites: Crypto-news and Bitcoinist.
• Topics: upcoming blockchain tech and nifty tips that I have discovered as a crypto enthusiast.
• Strong community following: 25,000+ monthly hits on articles.

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Thought Leadership

Seeking to spread awareness of Blockchain’s transparency, immutability and privacy guarantees, since June 2018 I have spoken at 15 Intl. conferences/forums attended by over 20,000 govt. officials & C-level executives. All my talks are available on YouTube and have over 40,000 views in total. I have worked to take my ideas forward with the people I meet at conferences: for instance, I developed a white paper with Govt. of Jharkhand (state the size of California) on how blockchains can work with agriculture and subsidies.

All my talks can be found here.

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Research

Privacy Centric Collaborative Machine Learning Model Training via Blockchain

(Peer-reviewed & published in Springer Journal ‘Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing’ – doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23813-1_8):

This paper tackles the problem of ‘data siloing’, where ML growth is stalled as organizations are unable to share training data due to privacy regulations. It presents a novel protocol to solve this problem. Paper presented at IEEE Cybernetics Conference at University of Salamanca (Spain): Video presentation can be seen here.

Blockchain: A Privacy Centered Standard for Corporate Compliance

(Peer-reviewed & under publication in Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Journal ‘IT Professional’ – ):
This paper presents blockchain as a potential technology that can allow for privacy and transparency to co-exist in the context of data access for corporate compliance (e.g. KYC/AML).

ZeroWallet: Zero-Knowledge Proofs Based Protocol to Secure Private Keys with Low-entropy Passwords

(Open-source protocol & functional public-demo developed with Dr Andrew Miller, UIUC – zerowallet.me):

Worked under Dr Andrew Miller’s supervision at UIUC for 6-weeks to develop a protocol that allows brute-force resistant password-derived private-keys (). Nominated for ZCash Foundation Grant.