Gopal Jain
Managing Partner, Gaja Capital
Mumbai, India
Gopal Jain is Managing Partner and Co-founder of Gaja Capital, an India-focused growth & buyout firm based in Mumbai. Founded in 2005, Gaja is a leading player in India’s private equity market with an exceptional track record of 20+ investments and an AUM of over $500m. Gaja has invested consistently in India’s mid-market across themes in education, financial services & consumer, with a key focus on driving scale and transformation in its portfolio companies via operational value add.
Gopal leads both the executive and investment functions at the firm and has personally led several of the Firm’s investments. Gopal has been investing in Indian equities since the age of thirteen and has been a professional investor in the Indian capital markets for almost thirty years. He is one of the more experienced private equity investors in India, having led or co-led over 25 private equity investments since 1995. Several of the companies Gopal has backed have grown 10x in value since the investment. Prior to Gaja Capital, he was country head for the Boston-based View Group one of the pioneers in Indian private equity.
Gopal is an active columnist and is currently member of SEBI’s Alternative Investment Policy Advisory Committee and Indian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association’s Executive Committee. He has a deep interest in the social sector and leads Gaja Gives which supports a wide and growing number of philanthropic efforts in India.
Gopal is a Graduate in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi. He is remembered on the campus for being one of the first graduates from the institute to turn entrepreneur before graduating. He currently lives in Mumbai with his mother Sudesh, wife Chitra and daughters Srishti and Ira.
Tariq Khan
Trustee, TiE Global
New York, India
Tariq Khan is an angel investor and a specialist in financing start-ups at the earliest stages of their launch. He co-founded Games 24x7 Inc which launched the largest on-line games company in India. His other investments include Buddi-Health, Vectorly, Fitbark, Resolute Innovation and Baby Destination. He is Past President of the New York Chapter of TiE, the largest mentoring organization for entrepreneurship. Currently he is serving a two year term on the TiE Global Board of Trustees.
Previously he worked for twenty years in finance, with major banks and financial institutions in most of the support and operational functions including settlements, finance, risk management, compliance and technology. Main companies he has worked for include Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, GM Asset Management, Citigroup Private Bank, Natwest, Lloyds Bank and Banca Nazionale del Lavoro.
In addition, Mr Khan has twenty years experience working in industrial and commercial organizations, from large Fortune 500 companies, to small, family owned enterprises. Major companies he has worked for include CNA Insurance, L’Oreal, Mitsui & Co USA, Fiat SpA, Filippo Fochi Spa, Hunter Douglas NV, Sun Chemicals, Colgate Palmolive, Ely Lily, Reuters, ENI and IBM.
Mr Khan grew up in Rome, Italy and after four decades in Europe moved to the US in 2000 where he has settled in the New York City vicinity.