Our Team

Kundan Shekhawat - Founder & CEO

Best known for his dynamic leadership, Kundan Shekhawat, Founder & CEO of Ascent Technology Consulting, is responsible for steering the company to where it is today.

Raised in a humble family and disciplined military background, he is a down to earth visionary with deep-rooted values.

He has comprehensive experience in financial services & extensive expertise in Product Development Engineering, strategy & P&L management. With a career spanning 18+ years, his vision was the one that carried Ascent through its successive stages of growth.

A passionate entrepreneur, Kundan’s determination built the organization to constantly enhance competitiveness, profitability, customer focus, partnership, branding, corporate values & governance.

Reza Asgari - Global Financial Services President

Reza comes from an extensive background in Finance and Technology in the Financial Services industry. He is leading us to grow our business and presence and work closely with everyone involved in business expansion. He is currently involved with Ascent’s various business aspects globally with all key Management & Strategic Advisory members.

Reza has spent the first half of his career in CIO positions managing technology for various banks and brokerage firms, building trading floors and complex trading applications.

In the second half of his career, Reza has held Partner positions in Unisys and various Big Four firms, such as Coopers & Lybrand, PwC, and most recently as a Partner at IBM with practices in Financial Risk Management and Payment Cyber Security.

Reza holds a BS in Accounting, MBA in Corporate Finance, and his Ph.D. course work majors in Information Technology and minors in Finance.

Reza lives with his family in New Jersey, and he enjoys his spare-time skiing, horseback riding, and developing ADX and Stochastic trading models for Russell 2000.

Siddharth Kohli - Member of the Board

Siddharth Kohli is a Chartered Accountant, a Company Secretary and a Corporate Lawyer by profession. He has in the past worked with organisations like EY, IFCI and RBI. He has been a consultant to the World Bank and has worked extensively on development projects across the South Asia region.

He has led financial and strategic transformations in early to mid stage companies by bringing together corporate best practices and strong governance models. He is an expert when it comes to investor relations and related transaction advisory.

Vikash Varma - Independent Board Member and Advisor

Vikash Varma is an experienced executive, having held CEO and other senior roles at several startups and large tech companies. He has extensive experience in growing companies globally. Vikash serves on the Board of several startups and non-profit organizations.

As a Board Member, Vikash leverages his extensive experience  as a seasoned CEO to help Entrepreneurs establish global partnerships, raise financing and accelerate revenue.

Atul Kulshreshtha - Strategic Advisor

Atul started his entrepreneurship journey in late 2020 and established GroByz Partners to help businesses transform and get ready for the future, primarily focusing on Digital Enablement & Adoption.

Over the last 3 decades, Atul worked with some of the best global organizations like – Capgemini, Colt Technologies, GE, FIS, American Express, etc., with outstanding leadership and best talent, helping clients on business transformation, growth, and optimization.

Till recently, Atul was Global Account Executive for a portfolio of large strategic Technology accounts, responsible for driving account growth and enhancing client relationships. Before that, Atul was heading the Business Services for India region and leading Capgemini’s Global Shared Services.

Atul joined Capgemini following the acquisition of IGATE and initially led the service line integration, transformation, and managed delivery for the global Financial Services portfolio. At IGATE, Atul was the Global BPO Head responsible for driving growth and strategy for their BPO business unit.

Atul is a fellow member of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. His interests include behavioral sciences, disruptive technologies, and talent development. He believes that the key to success is getting the right team and flawless execution.

John Denham - Strategic Advisor, Canada

John has been involved in the management of numerous technology companies over many years.

He is Managing Director for Trakcom Wireless Inc, a leading manufacturer of communications products and solutions for railroads and rapid transit systems.

He is also Chief Operating Officer at Eomax Corp., a manufacturer of tactical surveillance and reconnaissance systems used by defence and homeland security organizations around the world.

John is also Chief Financial Officer of Opterus Inc., a provider of SAAS-based store management software to major retail chains and President of Occulus Inc. a start-up sales management software company.

John was formerly Chief Financial Officer of Route1 Inc. (TSX: ROI) a provider of secure remote network connection solutions, and Managing Director of CIBC World Markets.

John is a professional Engineer and Chartered Financial Analyst.

Pushkar Jha - VP Client Delivery

With over 20 years exp in various stages of sourcing lifecycle, Pushkar has led Transitions, Operations and Business Development teams at several BPM organizations, besides managing B2B relationships with fortune 50 clients.

As head of Client Deliveries at Ascent he ensures the projects are managed from kick-off to delivery on-time, on-budget and on-brief, while helping the team members grow

Arindam Dasgupta - Products & Technology Specialist

Masters from BITS Pilani and Gold Medallist in Bachelors from BU with 17 years’ experience in Product Development

Technology Enthusiast with over 50+ Product Architecting & Deployments and 5 patents. In Depth understanding from Embedded to Cloud technologies by being part of Products like GM OnStar, Honda Connect, HARMAN IRA, Wipro Ecometer and others.

Lakshminarayana - SVP-Product Engineering

Lakshminarayana (Laks) has 20 years of software development experience in financial services domain. Laks is a techno-functional expert, managed various large transformation projects in UK and Singapore. He has designed and developed Award winning products in the Treasury Backoffice domain.

He has strong analytical, design and logical thinking capabilities. At Ascent, he heads the Financial Services division and manages the delivery & roadmap of AutoRecon & AutoEscrow

Laks holds MBA with specialization in Finance from ICFAI and BE (Hons) in Chemical Engineering from BITS Pilani. In his leisure time, Laks loves to watch movies and play cricket, badminton.

Astha Mehra - Vice President Finance

As the Vice President Finance at Ascent Business, Astha has the charter of the financial controller for the organization. She has robust experience in the domain of finance covering Corporate Finance, Business Reporting, Financial Planning and Analysis, Consulting, Budgetary Control, Taxation, Funds Management, Order Management and Process Integration.

She has been strategic partner and worked with large corporate houses to Start-ups. This has provided her with a blend of skills on how to scale up business. Astha has led multi-talented teams across organizations and across regions. She has been instrumental in setting up processes for cross-functional teams at various organizations for global businesses.

Shashi V - Regional Sales Head Middle East and Africa

An ex-Microsoft Program manager, Shashidhar has led strategic product development efforts with products like Microsoft Excel mobile, Microsoft Word mobile, Mobile Media App, Promart Escrow and AutoBCM.

With a Computer Science graduate degree from GMR IT, he dropped out of BITS, Pilani Masters degree to pursue his passion of product development. He possesses a large amount of experience in core software product development.

He drives Ascent in terms of business development, sales, strategies, delivery and support for Middle Eastern and North African region.

Sajid Shaikh - Product Head – BCM

Over 14 years of experience in the business continuity management, customer service, team management & finance division of multinational banks. Diploma in system analysis & designing. Qualified Business Continuity professional practitioners from DRI International and Lead Auditor ISO 22301:2012 & ISO 9001:2015 from BSI Training Institute.

Implemented BCM in one of the largest international financial institution with 57 country membership and the biggest Islamic bank in Abu Dhabi.

Proven expertise in Business Impact Analysis, BC Risk Assessment, BC Planning & Strategy, Business Continuity Policies & Procedures, Disaster Recovery, Project Management, Team Management, Contingency Planning, Vendor Management, Stakeholder Relationship, Workflow Automation, Internal/ External BCMS Audit & Certification.

Mohammed Tariq - Head of Marketing

Tariq comes with 16 years of experience and has worked in various industry verticals, such as FinTech, Healthcare, and Insurance in areas of SaaS software services, development services, Mobile App, Market Research, and Advertising in the US, Canada, and the UK in such companies as: Ebix, Eli Group, KiwiTech and AdMan.

Tariq is very hands on with SEO and PPC aspects of digital marketing to obtain a maximum impact on lead flow for the business and enjoys introducing new lead-generation channels to the system for growth hacking.

Neeti Shekhawat - Head of HR

Neeti is an experienced Human Resources Professional and having contributed to Multinational organizations & exposure to working in a Start Up, she has been a Strategic Partner to Business and hones a breadth of knowledge and experience in developing and managing a sound, humane and value based HR organization. She originates and leads Human Resources practices and objectives that will provide an employee-oriented; high performance culture that emphasizes empowerment, quality, productivity, and standards; goal attainment, and the recruitment and ongoing development of a superior workforce.

Diversity has been the theme for Neeti’s journey and with a keen understanding of business she enjoy‘s roles that impact organizations as a whole. She is a strategic thinker who understands that great companies require the intersection of great ideas, talented people and a unifying culture. As Head of HR for Ascent, she collaborates with businesses in understanding the people imperatives critical for business success and delivering the same through a wide spectrum of HR interventions.

Satish Amuluru - Product Head Financial Control

Satish Amuluru has 14 years of experience in design, development and implementing the banking products across the globe and has vast knowledge in Fintech Products, Card Networks, Clearing and settlements. He is a techno-functional expert in understanding the functional and technical aspects of products and projects. Satish Amuluru has successfully implemented large banking projects in India and middle east, he is a specialist in designing Banking Reconciliation products. His hobbies are cricket and listening to music.

Krunal - AVP- Pre Sales, Business Development & Sales

Krunal comes with 18+ years of successful proven experience across various profiles as SaaS solution Sales, solution architect, pre-sales, customer life-cycle management from strategy, sales and business development to operations and managed services in IT and Telecom Domain. Expertise in setting up process and governance structure as well as leading multiple high end telecom & IT projects of various size and complexity.

A proven strong National and International experience, offshoring with India, Mauritius, Singapore, Madagascar, NewZealand, Poland, Denmark, Germany, Sweden and France. Extensive experience in handling national and international clientele sales, account management, solution architect, customer success manager and Marketing lead role within IT and Telecom Space.

OPERATIONAL RESILIENCE

FINANCIAL RISK AND CONTROLS