We discuss the challenges S&C faced before they invested in real-time visibility with Roambee, we also discussed what their approach was, their learnings, advice to others and what they want to achieve with Roambee in the future. We finish of the podcast with a round of quick fire questions, where Jim talks about some of the challenges and trends heads of supply chain of today need to keep an eye on. Giving you a great insight into the supply chain industry of today.
As Vice President of Global Operations at Roambee, Pratik Soni is responsible for operational excellence and leading the strategic, multinational expansion of the company’s operational infrastructure and capabilities to enable business growth at scale.
Pratik has over 20 years of experience as an Operating Executive with subject-matter-expertise in global supply chain and operations management. He is a multi-published author and highly regarded industry thought leader with inventorship of foundational technology patents and trade secrets enabling digital transformations across industries.
Pratik’s career spans leadership roles across superior companies like 20th Century Fox, Beats by Dre, I.am.+, Apple and Omnichain. Most notably, he led Omnichain, a venture-funded supply chain SaaS startup, as its Founder and CEO, where he successfully launched & scaled autonomous supply chain technology solutions from procurement to delivery through Omnichain’s Cloud platform. He’s not just a strategist but also a player-coach, empowering cross-functional teams to achieve operational excellence.
Pratik has a Bachelor of Science in Business Information Systems and Global Supply Chain & Operations and advanced Certifications in Lean Sig Sigma – Continuous Improvement, CSCP and CPIM.
Meenakshi Singh is a Silicon Valley veteran with more than 30 years of experience in corporate finance, leadership, and management, mergers and acquisitions. She has been through a merger or acquisition 15+ times and has the unique ability to be able to view the exit strategy from both sides of the table. In her role as Roambee’s CFO and Board member, she oversees financial operations of Roambee and its foreign operations.
Meenakshi was the founding CFO of many technology companies including Apigee (NASDAQ: APIC), Cortina Systems, (acquired by Inphi Corporation), Ankeena Networks (acquired by Juniper Networks) and StratumOne, acquired by Cisco Systems and where she was an executive in the Mergers & Acquisitions team.
Marc is the Managing Director of Reefknot Investments, a Global Venture Capital firm, focusing on Supply Chain and Logistics Technology start-ups.
Reefknot, backed by Temasek and Kuehne + Nagel, strives to help drive Supply Chain and Logistics industry transformation by identifying and actively supporting high growth technology start-ups seeking to transform the industry.
Throughout his 20+ years career, Marc has actively been involved in the Supply Chain/Logistics and Technology space, Global and Asian Industry Think Tanks, as well as being on Boards and in Advisory functions in multiple Global and Asian growth companies.
Marc has also previously served as the CEO for an Asia Pacific Supply Chain Technology firm, in Executive/Directorship capacities in MNCs such as IBM and Deloitte Consulting, as well as founded/co-founded several successful start-ups and a Global Supply Chain/Logistics Technology Think Tank.
He is Certified in Production & Inventory Management (CPIM) from The Association for Operations Management (APICS), holds an IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Foundation Certification, and graduated with an Honours Degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering.
George is a distinguished leader in the finance and business community in Silicon Valley and the broader United States, with over 35 years of experience. He has held pivotal roles such as COO, CFO, and CEO at renowned organizations, including Pluribus Networks, Marvell Technology, Chordiant Software, Remedy Corporation, and Aeroprise, Inc. He has navigated an impressive track record of IPOs, substantial M&A deals, and capital-raising ventures, amounting to over $½ billion.
Starting his career as a CPA in the big-four accounting industry followed by subsequent executive roles, George possesses extensive board experience, notably as Chair of the Audit Committees at Bridgelux, Inc., Vendavo, Inc., Saba Software, Inc., GCT Semi, Inc., Rainmaker Systems, Inc., and Montalvo Arts Center. George was also appointed a member of President George Bush’s National Information Technology Advisory Committee. Currently, he serves as a Director of HeartBeam, Inc., a publicly traded medical device company, where he chairs the Audit Committee and is a member of the Compensation Committee.
George’s career highlights include his tenure as CFO for Remedy Corporation, which was recognized as the “#1 Hot Growth Company” in America by Business Week. He has spoken at Forbes magazine’s annual CFO conference, authored multiple articles, and been featured in The Wall Street Journal’s “CFO Journal.” He has delivered guest lectures at prestigious institutions like the University of California at Berkeley, Cambridge University in the UK, and Baylor University.
George holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley and a Bachelor of Science in Accounting/Business from the University of Southern California.
Dweep has over 10 years of experience advising or investing into companies across the growth cycle in Industrial IoT, financial services, energy and consumer sectors in US, Europe, and Asia.
He was previously Head of Venture Investments at Momenta Partners, where he led 7 industrial IoT investments. Previously he was Managing Director at Touchstone Ventures, a direct investment firm advising family offices on growth-stage investments, served as Director, Strategy and Business Development for Family Services at UBS Wealth Management, and led a UN financed market entry and financing program in Kenya.
A telecommunications engineer by training, he worked for over 6 years with Lucent and Hughes. He has worked in India, USA, Kenya, and China, and is currently based in Switzerland.
Deepak is a Senior Investment Manager at Qualcomm Ventures focusing on US investments. He is responsible for sourcing, deal execution and portfolio management. He brings 5+ years of investment experience across early to growth stage companies, combining his tech background with his passion for investing.
Before joining Qualcomm Ventures, Deepak was part of the founding team at the GPO Fund, NY based tech-focused investment firm, where he led several enterprise tech investments such as MapAnything (acquired by Salesforce). Prior to this role, he worked at Unilazer Ventures, investing in several successful consumer tech companies such as Lenskart. He has also worked at The Carlyle Group and Soros Fund Management as part of their investment team.
Deepak earned his MBA from Columbia Business School and a Bachelor of Technology in Computer Engineering from VJTI, Mumbai.
As Vice President of Revenue Operations, Sathish is responsible for ensuring customer satisfaction and effectively realizing revenues through solution deployment of its sensor-driven visibility and managing our partner ecosystem.
Sathish Gajaraju is a proven leader with 30+ years of broad experience in product & business development, technology deployments, and operations. He has set up technology development and delivery teams in the United States, Europe, and Asia for Internet of Things (IoT) and enterprise applications.
Before Roambee, Sathish deployed supply chain and logistics solutions for retail, hospitality, and high-tech verticals at scale as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of firms such as Bartronics and Infokall.
He holds a master’s degree in Computer Applications from BMS College of Engineering, India.
As Vice President of Growth at Roambee, Premsai Sainathan (Prem) is responsible for accelerating the company’s business through scalable and sustainable demand generation, branding, marketing, communications, and revenue enablement.
Prem brings 12+ years of entrepreneurial and global business growth experience; he helped Roambee launch its offering in several of its currently flourishing markets by establishing early product-market fit, setting up revenue teams, and templatizing go-to-market (GTM) strategies for repeatability.
Before Roambee, he co-founded and successfully built Skope Solutions, an Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled indoor positioning solutions firm focused on manufacturing, supply chain, and healthcare applications in the United States. He’s also worked with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), backed by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Prem is a published author and speaker with features and keynotes in Supply Chain Digital, Supply Chain Brain, Modern Materials Handling, Cargo Connect, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Global Logistics Show, and more.
He has a Master of Science (MS) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Florida, USA.
Pankaj Patel is the Chief Scientist and Vice President of IoT Research and Development for Roambee. In this role, he is responsible for leading new product innovations, solutions, and IP for a broad range of IoT applications.
Before Roambee, Pankaj was Founder, Lead Researcher and Chief Technologist at IntelliSys. For more than thirty years, he has focused on developing key technology and IP, then taking it into the market as successful external ventures and partnerships. These included three security products companies sold to Ademco (a division of Honeywell). In addition to Ademco, other key technologies were developed/licensed to Fortune 500 companies like Panametrics (GE & Olympus), Emerging Market Communications (Global Eagle Entertainment) and Aware Inc. Pankaj worked at Panametrics in a variety of leadership and scientific capacities and was critical in making Panametrics #2 in the world. He was the Founder and CTO of Biometrics fingerprint security company that had an IPO. Recently, he was instrumental to two Silicon Valley start-ups, RiskVision and Aceurity, in developing their key technology, solutions, and teams.
Pankaj holds Masters Electronics Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts, a Bachelors degree in Electrical Electronics from Sardar Patel University, India, and is GE Six Sigma for Software.
Ivan Diaz is Roambee’s Vice President of Service Delivery. In this role, Ivan is responsible for managing the delivery of all services that improve customers’ value and ROI derived from visibility.
Ivan has a broad range of technology and management skills with more than 12 years of professional consulting services with global companies. Before joining Roambee, Ivan was at T-Systems as Director of Pre-Sales & Solution Design. In this role, he was responsible for on-going and comprehensive SAP consulting expertise, including several full cycle system implementations across multiple industries and countries including South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Germany.
Ivan as has also served as a Director of Delivery, Solution Architect, and Enhancements/Production Support team leader providing services including systems integration, application management services, and solution design for Fortune 500 companies in the automotive, healthcare, manufacturing industries.
Ivan holds a Master’s Degree in Engineering from the University of Alicante, Spain and a Bachelor of Engineering from University Iberoamericana, Mexico.
As Regional Vice President of Sales and Customer Success, Maitreyee Sriram is responsible for the growth and expansion of Roambee’s business in India, the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META).
Maitreyee is a hands-on enterprise sales leader with a diverse experience of over 25 years in domains such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Software Applications, Infrastructure, and Managed Services.
She’s led business teams at multinationals such as Oracle and Ramco Systems to digitally transform companies with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platforms in the APAC region.
Maitreyee has an MBA in Marketing from the S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), India.
An energetic leader and results-driven executive with over 15 years of solution delivery experience, was featured in the list of ‘Supply Chain Pros to Know’ published by Supply Chain & Demand Chain Executive.
At Roambee, he is responsible for bringing emerging technologies in hardware, communication, data, and analytics to enable and optimize digital supply chains.
Before Roambee, Vidya was Co-Founder and VP Professional Services at KeyTone Technologies Inc., a RFID technology company focused on providing a technology-enabled service for real-time asset monitoring through an enterprise scale sensor-based platform. Global Asset Tracking UK Ltd successfully acquired KeyTone. He has also held influential and leadership roles at Plexus Technologies Inc., KPMG Consulting, Unisys, and PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
Vidya holds a Masters in Computer Science from Temple University and dual Bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Economics from Calvin College, Michigan.
Shailesh Mangal is Roambee’s Vice President of Engineering. He is responsible for the ensuring excellence in the development, performance, and quality all Roambee platforms and applications.
Shailesh has been developing enterprise and web applications for more than 20 years. His passion spans from nurturing highly productive and agile development teams to steering through fast-paced ever-changing development landscapes and maintaining code quality & performance. His main areas of interest include object-oriented design, system and cloud architectures, big data, real-time search, and analytics.
Shailesh holds a Masters in IT from The University of Texas and a Bachelors in Engineering from MNIT, Jaipur, India.
As a Vice President of Finance at Roambee, Jigna Yagnik is responsible for creating a financial platform for systematic growth, driving corporate finance, fiscal analysis, and governance. Jigna also oversees the recruitment, training, and development of Roambee’s human resource talent.
Jigna is a finance professional with over 15 years of varied experience in corporate finance, strategy, planning, budgeting, financial modelling, and compliance.
Prior to Roambee, Jigna led teams in finance and operations at PwC Strategy (Booz & Co) and Novasys. She led mergers & acquisitions (M&As), optimized working capital, brought in structure, and developed operating models. She played a key role in formulating and driving strategy by leading various business discussions that impacted P&L.
Jigna is a Chartered Accountant, a Chartered Finance Analyst (USA), and holds an MBA in Finance and Strategy from the Indian School of Business at Hyderabad, India.
With extensive experience providing legal and business guidance to technology, cloud, software and service companies in outside and in-house positions, Frank I. Hoppe serves as Roambee’s General Counsel. He is responsible for all aspects of Roambee’s expanding global legal endeavors. Before Roambee, Frank served as Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Kaseya; President and founding member of Hoppe General Counsel Services; Vice President and Assistant General Counsel at West Corporation, and Vice President of Corporate Development at uRoam, Inc. which was acquired by F5 Networks, Inc. He also previously worked as associate counsel at the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, and the law firm Krieg, Keller, Sloan, Reilley & Roman.
In addition to his J.D. from UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law, he received his B.A., with distinction, as an Echols Scholar from the University of Virginia where he served as Chairman of the University’s student-run Judiciary Committee.
Dave Ferretti is an enterprise systems and software sales leader for first-mover disruptive technologies in artificial intelligence/machine learning-based data science solutions for Global 2000 markets. As Vice President of Sales for Americas at Roambee, he is responsible for predictably accelerating the company’s revenues and scaling customer acquisition and account expansion efforts.
Dave began his sales career at Xerox; he then successfully built and scaled sales for five technology startups acquired by Fortune 500 companies such as HPE, Western Digital, Microsoft, IBM, and EMC. He has hands-on design and deployment experience with software systems engineering, delivering innovative end-to-end hardware/software solutions. He has held the highest level of US federal government security clearances.
Dave has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems/Business Administration from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Michael, through his company CABOA GmbH, is a senior executive advisor to DTCP’s Growth Equity business with more than 20 years of international experience in venture and growth capital, and private equity. In total, he has been responsible for funds with a volume of up to €750 million, invested in more than 40 start-up companies worldwide, and realized more than 30 successful exits. He supports companies mainly in questions of incorporation, funding, and exit – with a special focus on Europe, the USA, and Israel. He speaks the language of investors, start-ups and large to medium-sized companies and ensures sustainable success with his entrepreneurial thinking and acting.
Prior to his current role, Michael was Managing Director in DTCP’s Europe-based growth capital team and before that, Managing Director at T-Venture where he focused on disruptive wireless, deep-tech, and infrastructure investments. Earlier in his career, he worked as Senior Consultant at Detecon International, as Product Manager of the German fixed network operator o.tel.o Communications, and founded his own company.
Michael holds an M.Sc. in Economics from the University of Wuppertal, Germany.
Sanjay Sharma is a strategic thought leader with an impressive 17+ years of entrepreneurial experience building technology start-ups from the ground up. As CEO of Roambee, he is responsible for leading the company’s vision, driving its worldwide business growth, and increasing Roambee’s value.
He is also a renowned speaker and featured author on topics like supply chain, disruptive technologies, and digitization. He has delivered engaging talks around the world at prestigious platforms like Mobile World Congress, TiE, Global Digital Forum, Geo IoT World, Logipharma, Red at Summit, IoT Evolution Expo, International Smart Logistics & Supply Chain Conference, and DHL IoT Day.
Sanjay has successfully co-founded and led two successful Silicon Valley companies: KeyTone Technologies and Plexus Technologies, with successful exits. Prior to that, he was an innovator through his technology careers at NASA, EMC, and Schlumberger. He holds many patents and has published papers in journals like IEEE, ISCA, and South Dakota Academy of Science.
Sanjay has a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from South Dakota State University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Electronics Engineering from the University of Bombay.
New Episode Published: Supply Chain Tech Podcast with Roambee |