The world is our oyster
 

Debneel

Founder and Managing Partner

Debneel is a 3x tech entrepreneur & venture fund manager, with top quartile exits. A CPA by training, Debneel has 3 decades of experience in venture investing, tech entrepreneurship and investment banking.

He is the key sponsor and Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of Singapore domiciled Decacorn Capital (Decacorn), a cross-border technology Venture Capital Fund that curates best-in-class technology businesses, engineering disruptive innovation in key start-up destinations across the world, such as United States, Israel, Singapore, China and India.

With 4 plus years vintage, Decacorn has made 36 investments with 10 exits / liquidity events, clocking 36% IRR since inception and beating established benchmarks all along the way. Several of its investments have become unicorns. 

Before Decacorn, Debneel was a co-founder in an early-stage technology accelerator which he exited by selling his founding shares after a few early exits.

Prior to his foray as a fund manager, Debneel was a tech entrepreneur for 11 years, building a B2B Fintech business that culminated into a favourable outcome, giving him his first carried interest. This formed part of the initial capital for his decade long investing career as a fund manager. Along the way accredited investors joined him in his initiative as Limited Partners making him an unconstrained manager with a credible track record

At Decacorn, Debneel and his team endeavour to back resourceful entrepreneurs with hard skills; entrepreneurs who aspire to solve the big problems of our world; problems with a large adoption curve, providing instant gratification in making our planet shades better than what we inherited.

 
 

Dariusz

Partner

Warsaw based venture capital fund manager and hands on investor with several years of experience in managing sovereign-backed VC funds in Europe, credited to have founded Helix Venture Partners which was amongst the earliest VC funds set up with Polish public money.  

Dariusz started his career in San Francisco as a management consultant with Accenture and McKinsey acquiring  deep domain and executional capabilities, having driven initiatives in strategic advisory, deal origination and fundraising for various technology companies. Dariusz was also instrumental in founding Mckinsey’s Central European Business Technology Office in Warsaw, implementing solutions across insurance, telecommunications, information technology, and other sectors.

As a Partner in Decacorn, he continues to leverage his extensive network in the US and EU, covering both buy side and sell side, playing a vital role in sourcing investment opportunities, fund raising and forging strategic partnerships across Europe.

Dariusz holds a Masters degree in Business Administration from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

 
 

Ashwin

Partner

Passionate about disruptive technology led innovation that is changing the world for good, Ashwin is a Partner in Decacorn, a true “tribesman”, who believes in participating in Decacorn’s journey with his skin in the game inside the arena, rather than just be a bystander in the sidelines.

Ashwin is an established Supply Chain Leader in the Energy sector with a career spanning over two decades across multiple geographies. He has been instrumental in decisive commercial ventures for multi-billion dollar capital Energy project investments. He brings with him a wealth of experience with global giants Royal Dutch Shell, Reliance Industries (Oil & Gas) and Bharat Petroleum - India’s national oil company, where he has witnessed and led changes in energy transition with the impact of technology in full cycle from ‘conventional oil and gas’ to ‘unconventional and renewables’ to ‘alternate energies’.

A Chartered Engineer, Ashwin holds a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the prestigious Government Engineering College in Thrissur, Kerala and obtained his MBA from Lancaster University in UK, with specialization in Supply Chain Management, Strategy and Leadership. Ashwin is also a certified Green Belt from Six Sigma Academy, USA.

Ashwin is currently in The Hague, Netherlands and in the process of shifting his base to UAE, a region which is at the juxtaposition of two different worlds – the old and conventional world of oil and gas and the fast emerging future of alternate and renewable energy, an ideal time and place for Ashwin to unlock exponential value.

 

Sandi

Partner

An experienced entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and investor specialised in corporate governance, compliance, and wealth structuring. Based in Luxembourg, Sandi is a CSSF (Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier) approved authorized fund manager backed up by more than two decades of proven track record in driving profitability, growth, and operational improvement in C-level positions in reputed European financial institutions including UniCredit group, Bank Austrianstalt, and Alfa Asset Management. 

While having a very strong Pan European professional exposure, Sandi still maintains strong ties with regular visits to his roots in Slovenia, where he had graduated in Economics from University of Ljublijana and specialised in Entrepreneurship for his Masters degree.

 
 

Abhijit

Partner

Abhijit has over 25 years of experience in building successful business strategies and go-to-market models across Asia-Pacific. His core strength is in marketing and sales both direct and through channels and alliances.

Abhijit was one of the early adopters of digital marketing as a key area of specialization. This resulted in exponential growth of the technology businesses he ran in the economically and culturally diverse regions of South East Asia, North Asia and Australia, creating sales channels that rapidly on-boarded customers across 12 countries.

Abhijit brings with him an ability to identify and build lasting alliances as a critical strategy for businesses looking to scale rapidly in unfamiliar markets.

He has been an angel investor in his own merit for past several years. Being part of Decacorn core team he formalises his journey in the exciting world of technology led start-ups. He is based in Singapore for the past two decades.

 
 

Ayelet

Partner

Ayelet brings 17 years of deep experience in high tech manufacturing including almost a decade with Intel in USA and Israel. She provides business consulting and tech advisory to early stage tech startups and works closely with founders to facilitate cross border connections, providing access to large markets and growth capital across Israel, USA and Asia.

Ayelet has hands on experience of Mergers and Acquisitions, which she picked up from both sides, as the CEO of a company that was acquired by the leading insurance company in Israel as well as leading M&As as the acquiring company. She user her extensive knowledge in leading strategic business processes & collaborations, performance & productivity improvements, delivering significant profits improvements in all profit levels. 

Born and raised in Israel, Ayelet holds an Economics and Communications degree  from the Hebrew  University of Jerusalem  and a MBA from the The College of Management  Academic Studies in Israel.

 
 

Mark

Venture Partner

Born and raised in Melbourne, Mark is a multifaceted personality being an entrepreneur, technologist, investor, advisor, lecturer and hands on practitioner, having built, scaled and exited two award winning pharmacy and multi practice clinic groups and is credited to be amongst the early pioneers in this business to manage and own a specialist practice in Australia.

Mark has been the past President of the Victorian Branch of the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia and currently conducts advisory work covering all aspects of pharmacy practice, besides providing  consultancy for start-ups entering the Australian medical cannabis ecosystem, helping them navigate through the emerging regulatory environment covering this highly potential pathbreaking field of medical science.

With a keen passion for technology, Mark is involved in investing and providing services and advice to many biotech and health start-ups in Australia, Europe, North America and Israel and plays a key role in Decacorn’s core team in curating and evaluating deals particularly covering medical, pharma, biotech, food and agri sectors.

 

Ram

Venture Partner

Ram has over 30 years’ experience in engineering, marketing, and general management over a spectrum of high technology companies (Enterprise, B2B, B2C) across multiple segments (Big Data, Analytics, IoT, Second Screen etc.) He was the founding CEO of Fireclick which was acquired by Digital River. Previously he was a Venture Partner at Wellington-Partners and the Chair of the Steering Committee for GASV (German Accelerator, Silicon Valley.) Currently, he serves as an independent Board Member of early stage companies and advises larger public companies on new market entry strategies.

Ram’s technical intuition allows him to cut through technology and focus on business challenges crying for elegant solutions. His penchant for solving complex business challenges brings multi-disciplined teams together rapidly. Ram focuses on delivering results with a unique blend of intuition, discipline and creativity. Ram has post graduate degrees from UCSB and Indian Institute of Science.

 
 
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Vlaho

Legal Counsel - Europe

Vlaho Hrdalo brings over a decade of professional legal experience backed with a post graduate Master of Law degree from the University of Zagreb where he also teaches at the faculty of law. Vlaho was also called to the bar in 2011. Vlaho is currently finishing his PhD studies in company law and commercial law with the dissertation on smart contracts.

Nurturing technology start-ups is a passion as well as the mainstay for Vlaho as a legal professional. He is extremely resourceful in sourcing deals for venture investing, especially in Central and Eastern Europe and holds the position of the Chairman of Croatian Union for blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

A regular speaker at international conferences, Vlaho is the author of several research papers of which 'Terrorism and insurance from that risk' was introduced into the Library of the Croatian Parliament in May 2018. In 2019 he finished an online course of the University of Pennsylvania on Privacy Law and Data Protection.

 

Jen

Principal

Jen brings with her a rare combination of being a startup entrepreneur and a double qualified lawyer from UK and Singapore. Prior to starting her journey in Decacorn, Jen founded and exited from a startup in the luxury retail space, before which she worked several years as a solicitor in Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong on corporate, mergers & acquisitions, and private equity matters.

A strong believer in cross-cultural pollination of ideas having lived for several years in the East and West, she has developed a deep personal interest in exploring the psychology of human behaviour which she puts to good use in her role as a Principal while assessing the founders she meets from the diverse set of startups she evaluates every day in Decacorn.

Jen studied law from the University of Leicester in the UK and National University of Singapore (NUS) and is admitted to the Bar in Singapore.

 
 

Jeshua

Principal

Jeshua is an entrepreneur, filmmaker, investor and globetrotter who defies just about every stereotype one could have of a typical Singaporean. He had an early start in the world of media at the age of 9, started working at 15 and established companies in Singapore and Myanmar over the last 7 years.

His experiences include work with Singapore’s national broadcaster, setting up a co-working space and remote hiring service in Myanmar and marketing for startup ecosystems around Asia. Jeshua has visited over 323 cities in 66 countries and he believes that we’re all in the same boat, the title of a TEDx speech that he gave in 2019.

Jeshua began investing in his teenage years, where he was already an advocate for financial literacy and making money work for him. He started investing directly into start-ups in 2020 amidst the global pandemic, an event that he saw as a catalyst for digital transformation of companies and countries but that also dealt a huge blow to the world’s least resourced.

Besides travelling and work, Jeshua finds time to watch good films from across the world and loves chatting with visionary start-up founders who are using technology to improve lives. He is passionate about innovations that don’t just solve first world problems in first world places and endeavours to do something useful with his one life on planet earth.

 
 

Jeshua

Principal

Jeshua is an entrepreneur, filmmaker, investor and globetrotter who defies just about every stereotype one could have of a typical Singaporean. He had an early start in the world of media at the age of 9, started working at 15 and established companies in Singapore and Myanmar over the last 7 years.

His experiences include work with Singapore’s national broadcaster, setting up a co-working space and remote hiring service in Myanmar and marketing for startup ecosystems around Asia. Jeshua has visited over 323 cities in 66 countries and he believes that we’re all in the same boat, the title of a TEDx speech that he gave in 2019.

Jeshua began investing in his teenage years, where he was already an advocate for financial literacy and making money work for him. He started investing directly into start-ups in 2020 amidst the global pandemic, an event that he saw as a catalyst for digital transformation of companies and countries but that also dealt a huge blow to the world’s least resourced.

Besides travelling and work, Jeshua finds time to watch good films from across the world and loves chatting with visionary start-up founders who are using technology to improve lives. He is passionate about innovations that don’t just solve first world problems in first world places and endeavours to do something useful with his one life on planet earth.

 
 

Nima

Analyst

Nima is an Analyst. She has a Master of Science in International Social and Public Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Bachelor of Arts in History from King’s College London.

She has a passion for social and economic research, including key policy issues such as access to education, healthcare and the rise of technology. She has worked and volunteered in various organisations across the private and public spheres in both Singapore and London, including IntoUniversity, Law Society Pro Bono Services and Allen & Gledhill.

She is fluent in English, Hindi and Bengali. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, reading and photography.

 
 

Sarita

Research Analyst

Sarita is an Software Engineer and MBA with over 11 years of well rounded experience in coding, development, research and consulting across a host of industry segments namely retail, pharma, technology, healthcare, telecom, financial services and engineering process controls. 

Her experience in research & consulting encompassed critical assignments for a variety of sophisticated process control and industrial sensors in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning  including Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) besides IoT (Internet of Things), Factory Automation & Robotics and Big Data Analytics.

She brings to the table rich experience in primary and secondary research from her diverse work stint with Honeywell, CRISIL, Genpact, Convergys covering (i) analytics encompassing customer and competitor, product and partner, price and promotion insights and (ii) benchmarking studies using various qualitative and quantitative models/frameworks. She specialises in identifying market trends and offerings, pricing, business models and operations research.

She has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering and a post graduate diploma in Marketing & Information Technology. 

Sarita is also a professional cyclist with a 600km BRM title. She is a regular at HIIT, kick-boxing and zumba.

 
 

Adi

General Partner

Adi graduated as a Physicist with distinction and went on to complete his Masters in Computer Science Engineering, specialising in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. He is an alumni on the Dean's list of one of the top universities in the world.

Adi brings to the table a plethora of cross industry experience covering Data Science, Algorithms, and Systems Engineering. He started his career as a Full Stack Software Engineer specialising in complex event-driven systems.

At Decacorn, he oversees the technical evaluation of startups that use exponential technologies to produce game changing results.

Adi is a keen traveler and an ardent reader. He uses every opportunity to travel to far away places around the world as a backpacker to enrich himself from the experience of meeting new people and learning about new cultures. He uses these experiences of his in his everyday work to create delight for all his stakeholders

 
 

Adi Mukherjee

Partner

Adi graduated as a Physicist with distinction and went on to complete his Masters in Computer Science Engineering, specialising in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. He is an alumni on the Dean's list of one of the top universities in the world.

Adi brings to the table a plethora of cross industry experience covering Data Science, Algorithms, and Systems Engineering. He started his career as a Full Stack Software Engineer specialising in complex event-driven systems.

At Decacorn, he oversees the technical evaluation of startups that use exponential technologies to produce game changing results.

Adi is a keen traveler and an ardent reader. He uses every opportunity to travel to far away places around the world as a backpacker to enrich himself from the experience of meeting new people and learning about new cultures. He uses these experiences of his in his everyday work to create delight for all his stakeholders.

 
 

Manon

Analyst

Manon Lecuyer brings with her an interesting blend of social consciousness and passion for technology which helps her to empathetically analyse the impact of emerging technologies and disruptive business models on our society. As an Analyst in Decacorn, Manon helps in assimilating relevant datapoints to support the team in making investment decisions besides engaging with business partners and investors from Europe and Asia to reinforce our core philosophy of creating true cross border play.

Manon has over half a decade of experience in working with founders, building digital models in social and education space and is now looking at expanding her horizon with exposure in the diverse and rapidly expanding startup space in Asia

Manon holds a bachelor degree in social studies from the Institut Regional du Travail Social, Paris and a management degree from CNED Paris. She is a French native and is equally conversant with English.

 
 

Mikhail Semenov

Geek in Residence

Mike believes that adaptable generalists are people who rule the world. As a Physicist, who has worked in universities, start-ups and financial companies, Mike made it to Assistant Vice President in Deutsche Bank, but changed course to obtain a PhD in Theoretical Physics, specialising in Machine Learning technologies for a better understanding of Molecular Quantum Processes.

Having been a Data Scientist, Developer, Systems and Business analyst across sectors, Mike possesses a very broad range of skills and tools that help him and his stakeholders to achieve their goals.

Mike is currently advising on strategy and business development at an early-stage start-up accelerator and a ground-breaking shockwave technology company in Moscow, as well as a pharmaceutical company in Switzerland. At Decacorn, Mike assists the team in evaluating technology investment opportunities using his vast and deep experiences in academia and industry.

At rare times when Mike isn't working, he can be found hiking, exploring urban landscapes or reading a book with a glass of wine. Mike is bilingual in Russian and English, with intermediate knowledge of Spanish and Czech, with several other languages on the way.

 

Narayan

India Anchor

Narayan is the Founder of Power2sme and serves as its Chief Executive Officer and Board Member. He is responsible for the overall profitability and performance of the organization. He sets the overall direction for the business and focuses on the scalability and growth of the business. He is a qualified Cost Accountant and a seasoned entrepreneur.

Narayan was also the Founder and CEO of Denave, India's largest technology powered sales enabling services company, prior to forming BEBB India. He continues as a Board Member at Denave. Narayan started his entrepreneurial journey after giving up a flourishing corporate career with Microsoft India in the late nineties.

Today he epitomizes the Indian home grown entrepreneurial streak which now drives the burgeoning "start up" ecosystem in India, the fastest growing startup market in the world. With his extensive experience of working in the SME segment, first in the corporate world and later in his entrepreneurial journey, Narayan has deep understanding of the startup ecosystem in India, a knowledge he uses to anchor Decacorn's investments in India. Narayan is based in New Delhi and holds the office of Vice President of Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) in the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FICCI).