Sachin Taparia
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Sachin Taparia is a corporate leader turned social impact and new media entrepreneur with a mission to strengthen local communities and make “credible” information required in daily life, easily available. LocalCircles enables private real identity based trusted online communities in cities for neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, healthcare, local needs and interests enabling citizens to easily assist each other, find credible information, drive good governance and easily come together.
Sachin strongly believes that accountable social media if applied to constructive problem solving can positively transform our world. It can help empower communities and citizens and make urban daily life easier and better. Sachin is also an active speaker, contributor and panelist on subjects of business accountability, trust, integrity, corporate governance and anti-corruption. He has spoken and written on these subjects for the World Economic Forum (WEF), Global Media Forum, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and several other organizations. Sachin also serves on the CII Delhi Task Force, an industry group that works towards overall improvement of the state of Delhi.
Before starting LocalCircles in late 2012, Sachin was the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Aviall India at The Boeing Company. He led the startup of Aviall India in 2008 and over a period of four years established Aviall India as a leading supplier of aircraft components and services in India with over 60 customers. While in this role, Sachin was closely involved in efforts to develop an independent Aviation Support industry in India. Prior to joining Boeing, Sachin was the Director of Supply Chain Services at Aviall, Inc (NYSE: AVL) in Dallas, Texas. During his tenure at Aviall, he was closely involved in the transformation of Aviall from a parts distributor to the world’s leading supply chain management services provider in the aviation and defense industry. Aviall grew several fold during 2000 – 2006 and was acquired by The Boeing Company in 2006. Previous to that, Sachin was a management consultant at Xelus, Inc (now Servigistics) and lead services strategy and systems initiatives at over 10 Fortune 500 companies. From 2010-2013, Sachin also served on the Advisory Board of TVS and Sons, India's largest auto services company.
Sachin holds a Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Cincinnati, USA and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology (NIT) Bhopal, India. After living in United States for over 10 years, Sachin relocated back to India in 2008. He along with his wife Nidhi and two sons, Ritvik and Aryaman, reside in the Delhi NCR area. Sachin is an engaged parent, neighbor, colleague and his interests include investing, philosophy, kids and cricket.
Abhi Gupta
Executive Director and Chief Technology Officer
Abhi Gupta is a technologist with an aspiration of building technology that would create tangible value in the lives of millions of people and will uplift the society as a whole.
Prior to co-founding LocalCircles, Abhi spent more than 14 years as senior manager and architect in various fortune 100 companies such as Oracle and GE both in India and in the USA. He has architected scalable distributed web applications that processed millions of transactions worth billions of dollars every year. He was the author of a blog on data integration and has contributed towards various open source projects. He won many awards for his innovative approach, most notably one at Oracle Open World for his design for Service Oriented Architecture. Abhi developed a personalized search engine for products and car rentals deals online in his spare time...
In his spare time, he loves to watch soccer, play ping pong and spend time with his wife and 2 kids.
Mukesh Gupta
Co-founder and Member of Advisory Board
Mukesh Gupta is a technologist turned entrepreneur who strongly believes that technology can improve efficiency in every dimension of our life. Mukesh has a passion for conceptualizing; designing and building technology products while always keeping the end user in mind.
As a parent, neighbor and colleague living in Silicon Valley, it took Mukesh three years to figure out that several of his work place employees lived in the same neighborhood that he lived in and their kids went to the same elementary school as his kids. Mukesh concluded that if he was connected to these locals with commonalities, he could easily carpool to work, leave kids at their place in emergency and the kids could have a shared school drop off or pick up. In addition, he could ask them about a trusted pediatrician; find a racket ball partner or come together with four neighbors and negotiate a good price for a termite treatment.
These first-hand experiences lead to the foundation of LocalCircles. By providing people and their local associates, a technology driven high trust environment, LocalCircles will improve the efficiency of people’s daily lives and strengthen their association with the local communities they live, work or associate with.
Prior to co-founding LocalCircles, Mukesh managed the security appliances product lines, a $300M/year business, for Juniper Networks. He has spent 14 years in Silicon Valley building, managing, and marketing hi-tech products for companies such as Juniper, Tropos Networks, and Nokia. At Tropos, he was responsible for building products that ran the world’s largest WiFi mesh network. Mukesh has also been associated with a few early-stage startups in Silicon Valley as an advisor or investor.
Mukesh was an active contributor to Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a standards body that defines Internet standards. He co-authored 2 RFCs (internet standards documents) and co-chaired VRRP working group for 8 years. Apt at coming up innovative and original solutions, Mukesh has 11 issued/pending patents on various aspects of technology.
Mukesh holds a BE from Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal, India, MS from University of Toledo, USA. He founded LocalCircles during the final year of his MBA program from Haas School of Business, Berkeley, USA and is currently on leave from the program.
Mukesh lives in Milpitas, CA with his wife Sandhya and two daughters, Jiya and Aashi. His interests include following technology startups, skiing, and playing racquet ball.
Nadir Godrej
Member of Advisory Board
Managing Director, Godrej Industries
As someone who understands consumers and technology well, Mr. Godrej strongly believes that LocalCircles will be a key enabler in simplifying daily lives of people through credible information.
Mr. Godrej is the Managing Director of Godrej Industries and Chairman, Godrej Agrovet. He is also a Director of numerous firms including Godrej & Boyce, Godrej Foods and Godrej Consumer Products. Outside of Godrej Group, Mr. Godrej serves on Board of Directors of Indian Hotels Company Limited as well as Mahindra and Mahindra Limited.
A veteran of Indian industry, Mr. Godrej has played an important role in developing the animal feed, agricultural input and chemicals businesses owned by Godrej. His active interest in research related to these areas has resulted in several patents in the field of agricultural chemicals and surfactants. With his tremendous experience and expertise Mr. Godrej has also contributed to the development of a variety of industries by participating keenly in industry bodies such as the Compound Livestock Feed Manufacturers Association of India, Indian Chemical Manufacturers Association and Oil Technologists’ Association of India.
Currently, Mr. Godrej is the President of the Indo French Technical Association and the Alliance Francaise Mumbai. For his contribution to Indo-French relations, the French Government has honored him with the awards of "Chevalier de L'Ordre National due Merite" and "The National Order of the Legion of Honour".
A Bachelor of Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Master of Chemical Engineering from Stanford University, Mr. Godrej has also done his MBA from the Harvard Business School. He lives in Mumbai, India with his wife and three sons. Mr. Godrej’s interests include Science, Linguistics, Swimming and Poetry. He is the author of "Life and Other Poems", a collection of English and French poems.
Anand Mahindra
Member of Advisory Board
Chairman, Mahindra Group
One of the most widely followed business leaders on Social Media and Chairman of India's Mahindra Group, Mr. Mahindra believes that LocalCircles is one of the best ways in the world to empower the common citizen to help themselves.
As the Mahindra Group’s leader-statesman, his tenure has strengthen the group's presence in India, blazed new trails the world over, and focused on innovation and technology as group’s key drivers in the 21st century. Mr. Mahindra also spearheads the group's efforts to codify its philosophy of empowering people everywhere to Rise, and has made Mahindra a coveted, purpose-driven brand. His global perspective has led to a renewed focus on culture, making Mahindra Group a great place to work. Mahindra Group's critical shift in its mind-set, from second-to-none to a global federation of innovative companies, has been Mr. Mahindra's singular achievement.
Mr. Mahindra is co-founder of the Harvard Business School Association of India, and was recently made a “Knight of the Order of Merit” by the President of the French Republic. Some of his noteworthy accolades include being voted the “Entrepreneur of the Year” at the Forbes India Leadership Awards (2013) and the Global Leadership Award by the US-India Business Council (2012). He also chairs the India Design Council, and is a member of the World Bank Group’s Advisory Board for Doing Business.
A noted business commentator and humanitarian with over 2.4 million followers on Twitter, Mr. Mahindra frequently makes the case for Indian business at global forums. He initiated the Nanhi Kali programme two decades ago to provide free education to economically under-privileged girls. He’s also responsible for one of the largest personal donations overseas by an Indian – an endowment of 10 million USD to the Harvard Humanities Center, which has been renamed as the Mahindra Humanities Center.
Mr. Mahindra graduated with honours (magna cum laude) from Harvard College, Massachusetts, in 1977, and secured an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1981.
R. C. Bhargava
Member of Advisory Board
Chairman, Maruti Suzuki
As someone who stands for values like accountability and integrity and understands the evolution of a society, Mr. Bhargava strongly believes that trust building is much needed in our local communities as well as businesses.
Mr. Bhargava is currently the Chairman of the Board at Maruti Suzuki India Limited. Maruti Suzuki is India’s largest auto manufacturer with annual revenues of $6.7 Billion. Mr. Bhargava joined Maruti in 1981 and is widely regarded as instrumental for the success of Maruti.
Mr. Bhargava is also on the Board of Directors of a number of leading companies in India. These include Grasim Industries, UltraTech Cement Company, Aditya Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company, Polaris Software Lab, Optimus Global Services, Infrastructure and Financial Services Limited, Dabur Industries, Idea Cellular, Thomson Press and Taj Asia. He also serves on the Indian Advisory Boards of BAE Systems Ltd, Rio Tinto, Huawei and Hitachi Ltd.
Mr. Bhargava joined the Indian Administrative Service (I.A.S.) in 1956 and stood 1st in the batch and was allotted to the U.P. cadre. He held several senior positions as Secretary and Joint Secretary in various Central Government Ministries in India as well as a Director at Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited.
In his efforts towards helping the education system in India, he has previously been the Chairman of the board of governors of the Doon School, Dehradun; and Chairman of IIM, Lucknow and IIM Calcutta. He is currently Chairman of the IIM, Ranchi. Mr. Bhargava has also chaired an IIM Review Committee constituted by the Ministry of Human Resources Development of the Government of India.
In November 2011, the Emperor of Japan conferred on Mr. Bhargava the “Order of the Rising Sun Gold and Silver Star”. Earlier he was selected for the Life time achievement award for Management by the Economic Times. Mr. Bhargava has also written a book titled ‘The Maruti Story’ and a book in Japanese on Suzuki’s strategy in India.
Mr. Bhargava holds a Master of Sciences degree in Mathematics from Allahabad University, India and a Master of Arts in Developmental Economics from Williams College, Williamstown, MA, USA.
