BITS Alumni Association

BITSAA International Team

Brij Bhushan ('65) is currently retired from Reston Consulting Group, which he founded in 1986. RCG provides Systems Integration services in the field of telecommunications to the US Federal Government. Brij graduated from BITS Pilani in 1965 and subsequently taught there from 1966 to 1969 and had a return engagement during Fall of 2006. Brij holds a Masters from Auburn University (1970) and has completed course work towards Doctor of Engg in EE at Concordia University, Montreal Canada. Brij and his wife Champa (also a BITS alumn) live in the suburbs of Washington DC and have three grown up children Anju, Anita and Anup.

Dr. AP Mathur ('70) is the Computer Science Department Head at Purude University. Dr. Mathur holds a PhD in Computer Science, MS and BS in Electrical Engineering all from BITS Pilani.

Dr. SP Kothari('74) is the Gordon Y Billard Professor of Accounting at Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has held Professorship position at the Simon School, University of Rochester and visiting professorship positions at London Business School, Cranfield University, UK, University of Technology, Sydney and Baruch College, New York and City University Business School, London. He has authored a book titled Financial Statements Analysis, written over 50 articles for The Hindu and The Economic Times, and been invited to speak at universities and conferences around the world. Dr. Kothari holds a PhD in Accounting from the University of Iowa (1986), an MBA in Accounting and Finance from IIM Ahmedabad (1982) and a B.E. in Chemical Engineering from BITS Pilani (1979).

Chandra Bhople ('74) is Director of Business Development at Osellus Inc., a software product company with offices in USA and Canada. He has worked in USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and India for companies such as Osellus, TechSpan, Sun Microsystems, DEC, Wang and HCL. His expertise is in general management, marketing and sales and has experience of working with customers from various industries such as Manufacturing, Banking & Finance, Telecommunication, Government and Education. For last few years, Chandra has been active in education field in India and abroad. He holds MBA and B E in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from BITS Pilani.

Punita Pandey ('84) is the founder and CEO of netCustomer, Inc. netCustomer provides advanced enterprise applications support leveraging a 24x7 global delivery model. Punita holds a bachelor's degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from BITS, Pilani and a master's degree in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. Punita splits time between Noida, India and San Jose, California.

Rajesh Chelapurath ('88) Rajesh is President & Managing Member at Ceera Investments, LLC, a registered investment advisory firm that manages investment portfolios for individuals, trusts, pensions, and corporations. Prior to founding Ceera Investments, LLC in 2005, Rajesh began his career in investment management and research when he joined the Burnham Financial Group’s Houston office in 1998. At Burnham, as Investment Analyst, and later as Associate Managing Director, Rajesh helped manage assets for high net worth clients. Rajesh has also held several marketing positions at the Medical Equipment Division of Larsen & Toubro Ltd in Mumbai, India.
Rajesh currently serves as a Trustee, BITSAA Intl, and the Chief Investment Officer of BITSAA Investment Committee that oversees the investment fund of BITSAA. At BITS, he was actively involved in Oasis’91 (as STUCCAN, Art ‘n Dee), Oasis’92 (as Ex-Officio STUCCAN), and in Apogee. He is a Charter Member of TiE Houston and a Member of the Board of The Marthannie Music Conservatory College Preparatory School, Houston. He is also a member of the Houston Society of Financial Analysts, the CFA Institute, the World Affairs Council (Houston), and the Houston Entrepreneurs Forum.
Rajesh graduated from BITS, Pilani in 1993 with a B.E. (Hons) in Electrical & Electronics and an M.Sc. (Hons) in Physics. In 1998, he obtained an MBA (Finance) from the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University, New Orleans. Rajesh is based out of Houston with his wife (Deepa Poduval, a BITS (’94) alum) and daughter, Aashna.

Niranjan Bose ('92) Niranjan works as a business analyst, Infectious Diseases, with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Niranjan holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Dartmouth College and an MS in biological sciences and BS in pharmaceutical sciences from BITS, Pilani. He also received the Business Bridge Diploma from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
Prior to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he was with SDG Life Sciences, a unit of IMS Health, where he was a Senior Consultant and assisted clients in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries with strategy development, company valuations, preclinical research validation, revenue forecasting, and competitive assessments. His consulting experience includes assisting pharmaceutical clients in evaluating possible acquisition opportunities and developing models to value companies considered to be potential acquisition and licensing targets. He has also developed and helped implement evaluation frameworks for due-diligence of biotech manufacturing facilities as part of a biosimilars entry strategy for a specialty pharmaceutical client. Additionally, he has experience working with senior research scientists in the evaluation of preclinical research programs across various therapeutic areas. His doctoral thesis was on cholera pathogenesis, with a focus on developing the assembly mechanism for an attachment factor, which is currently being targeted as a vaccine target. Niranjan's research experience spans various aspects of preclinical research and target identification in the pharmaceutical industry and enzymatic applications in the biotechnology industry. He has worked in academic and industrial research labs in India, the United States, and Singapore in the areas of formulation development, assay development, vaccine target biogenesis, and rational drug design.

SarathKolla ('93) is an independent Software Consultant providing technology services to Insurance and Finance companies. He served as a Product Development Architect at Netkey (Kiosk and Digital Signage Solutions provider), SupplyInsight (RFID Solutions provider) and Metaserver (Business Process Workflow Middleware Provider). His expertise includes providing Vision and outlining Technology Roadmap for complex products and applications. He graduated from BITS, Pilani in 1998 with a B.E. in Computer Science and M.Sc in Biological Sciences. Sarath holds a Masters degree in Computer Science at University of Denver, Colorado, USA in 2000. He lives in CT, USA with his wife (Meghna) and son (Yug Sai). His passions include playing VolleyBall, Cricket, Tennis and Table Tennis.

Krishna Hegde ('96)

currently works at Lehman Brothers, New York in the Credit Strategy team. Before joining Lehman, Krishna earned his MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. From BITS, he joined Hindustan Unilever as a Business Leadership Trainee and subsequently worked as an IT manager handling business intelligence systems for sales and supply chain. At Pilani, he did his BE (Hons) in Computer Science and his ID number was 96A7PS034. He lives in New Jersey with his wife Priya. Krishna co-founded BITS2Bschool and coordinated the public-relations efforts within India for BITSConnect.

Nikhil Kolar ('96) is an associate with Booz Allen Hamilton. He is in the Operations practice at their Cleveland Office. At Booz Allen, Nikhil has worked on a number of operations and growth related projects in the auto, consumer, energy and healthcare industries. Nikhil has also worked at Amazon.com as an Operations Manager. Back in India, Nikhil worked for Celstream Technologies in Bangalore, developing embedded applications for Xerox color printers. At BITS, Nikhil was part of the election commission in addition to being the CompSci Co-ord for APOGEE'99. Nikhil holds an MBA (with University Honors) from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon (2005) and completed his BE (Honors) Computer Science from BITS, Pilani (2000). Nikhil lives in Cleveland with his wife, Reema, who is also from BITS, Pilani.

Ashish Garg('97) is a Strategic Marketing Manager at Cypress Semiconductor. Ashish has worked with BITSAA for four years at different positions including Chief Editor, BITSAA Sandpaper 2.0 (Alumni Magazine), Secretary of the BITSAA Silicon Valley Chapter as well as a volunteer for Project BITSConnect. Ashish created on-campus BITSAA teams at the Pilani and Goa campuses as well as the first Cypress PSoC lab in India at the BITS Pilani Goa campus. Ashish is an Instruite from the almost-famous 1997 batch of BITS Pilani. At BITS, Ashish was member Election Commission, member Department of Controls, Instru APOGEE co-ord and President, Sangam. Incidentally, he also holds an MS degree in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Santa Barbara.