Avinash Singh
Avinash has close to two decades of rich experience in the areas of Sales, Marketing, Global Cross Border Collaboration, Software Product Development, Offshore Outsourcing and Professional Services.
Avinash is currently the CEO and MD of Excel Ventures, an early stage Private Equity fund which invests in the Technology, Healthcare and Education segment primarily in the Indian market.
He has a deep understanding of Viral Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Web 2.0 Frameworks and their application to socio-behavior patterns and networks of various consumer demographics.
Avinash was a founding member of Birlasoft and was responsible for the initial setup of the company, which included establishing the infrastructure, building the team and setting up the required systems and processes for global operations. As Chief Operating Officer, Avinash was responsible for global operations across the USA, Europe, APAC, Japan and Middle East markets. His prime areas of focus was in the Financial Services, Retail, Healthcare and Technology Industries.
Avinash was the first employee of the company that was setup in 1990. He worked with Birlasoft till January 2008. In this period he built the company from scratch to what is today a 5000 person organization with annualized revenues of close to $ 180M.
He is a dynamic and passionate leader who led the organization through various transformations from a US based software services company to what is today a respected Global Solutions company which is part of the Nasscom Top 20.
He was responsible for acquiring a number of the significant customers which include GE – a contract which has accrued over US$ 300M over the last 5 years and is expected to add another 200M in the next 2 years of the existing contract tenure, other major customers acquired and managed in recent times include Citibank, Monster, UTC, Quest Diagnostics, Credit Suisse, Centex Homes, Sage Software, Hollywood Video, Fidelity, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi and a number of others.
As the Marketing Leader he crafted and led various high impact initiatives including a recent one which resulted in positioning Birlasoft extremely favorably in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. He has relations with various Industry though-leaders and Analysts such as Gartner, TPI, Forrester, Neo-IT, Nasscom etc.
He has experience dealing with C Level and Board Executives of Fortune 500 type companies globally, He has worked and traveled extensively in various parts of the world including the US, Europe, the Far East, India and Australia.
Alumni, Associations and CSR:
Harvard Business School Alumni Network (Class Secretary),
Member of the Indian Angel Network,
DEI APAC (North America Co-ordinator),
Charter Member of TiE NJ/Philadelphia
Part of NJ chapters of United Way and Habitat for Humanity and involved with the SOS Village program.
Academic Background:
Top of his class in his BS in Electronics & Electrical Engineering, he is also a qualified Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). He is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School (HBS) where he completed his Advanced Management Program (AMP) and is the elected Secretary of his Class.
He has also participated in multiple leadership development workshops at the GE Leadership and Learning Institute at Crotonville. Has conducted and participated in various workshops ranging from
Sales Management and Leadership, Organizational Behavior and Development, People Development etc.