Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Kunal Bahl, Varun Berry: Meet the mentors of Nikhil Kamath and Kishore Biyani's The Foundery

Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath and Future Group co-founder Kishore Biyani have come together to introduce The Foundery, a residential business launchpad designed to back early-stage startups.

The programme, aimed at helping Indian startups to gain momentum, promises to turn aspiring entrepreneurs into co-founders of funded, launch-ready businesses within three months.

The Foundery is a 90-day immersive experience for participants that guides them through a range of matters from concept development to investment readiness with the help of mentors as well as funding.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Kunal Bahl, and Rama Bijapurkar are some of the mentors of The Foundery, whose programme is based out of Alibaug, Maharashtra.

Here is everything you need to know about them.

Who are the mentors of The Foundery?

Vijay Shekhar Sharma: One of the most well-known entrepreneurs of India, Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the co-founder and CEO of Paytm, one of the country's first payment apps. He is credited with the revolutionisation of the digital payments and financial services sector in India.

Mithun Sacheti: Mithun Sacheti is the founder of CaratLane, a diamond brand that changed how the country buys its jewellery, catering to women of the new age. Over the past 15 years, he built CaratLane, which is now owned by the Tata Group, into India’s leading omni-channel jewellery brand.

Varun Berry: The former CEO and Managing Director of Britannia, Varun Berry is one of the most well-known industrialists in India. With nearly 40 years of experience, he has worked in some of the top companies in India and abroad, including PepsiCo and Hindustan Unilever Limited.

Kunal Bahl: He is the co-founder of AceVector Limited, which is the holding company for Snapdeal, Unicommerce and Stellaro Brands. As the co-founder of Titan Capital, Bahl has invested in companies like Ola Cabs, Urban Company, Razorpay, Ofbusiness, Mamaearth, among others.

Aakash Chaudhry: The co-founder and chief mentor of Aakash Educational Services, Aakash Chaudhry is the one behind the expansion of the company's educational services portfolio to IIT-JEE test preparatory services, foundation coaching services as well as digital learning programs.

Santosh Desai: A columnist and brand expert, Santosh Desai spent 21 years in advertising and was the President of McCann-Erickson, one of India's premier advertising agencies.

Prashanth Prakash: He is a founding partner of a venture capital firm Accel Partners in India.

Aakrit Vaish: An AI expert, Aakrit Vaish runs Activate, the country's first homegrown venture capital firm purpose-built for AI companies. He built one of India's first AI company's Haptik.

Rama Bijapurkar: Rama Bijapurkar is a business adviser, independent director on boards of blue-chip corporate and academic institutions, researcher, and academic.

Haresh Chawla: A partner at TrueNorth, Haresh Chawla previously worked at Network18 as its CEO. He has years of experience in the industry.

Ranjan Anandan: Rajan Anandan is the Managing Director at Peak XV, and is credited with advising the company in early-stage startups.

Ireena Vittal: An author and business advisor, Ireena Vittal serves as an independent director at companies like HDFC, Godrej Consumer, Wipro, Compass and Titan.

Garima Deveshwar Bahl: Garima is a leadership coach and the founder of Avasaram. She spent over a decade at the World Bank in its development sector.

Jacob Mathew: A designer from the National Institute of Design, Mathew Tessaract Design and Idiom Design, Dovetail Furniture, Spring Health Water.

Aditya Sehgal: An angel investor from the UK, Aditya Sehgal founded Asgard.world, an AI-powered marketplace.

Karthik Reddy: Karthik Reddy is the founder of Blume Ventures, one of India's leading early stage Venture funds.