The IITK Entrepreneurship Forum (IIT-KEF) was an inspiration of Pavan Nigam (1980) following on the phenomenal success of a similar group he founded for his other alma mater, University of Wisconsin (siliconvalleybadgers.com) a few years ago. His co-founders for the IITK initiative are Ramneek Bhasin (1981), Rajiv Batra (1982), Rajiv Jain (1986), Jai Rawat (1991), Jitendra Gupta (1993), Dheeraj Pandey (1997), Nakul Mandan (2003), Shvetank Jain (2006), and Cherian Mathew (2008).
Pavan and the co-founders realized that the Bay Area has a tremendous number of very successful IITK graduates – entrepreneurs, CEOs, executives, venture capitalists, and even some attorneys, investment bankers and consultants. In addition, there were a number of IITK alumni starting their own companies. This led to the idea behind IIT-KEF, where such alum could leverage each other’s experiences and networks.
This group holds events every 2-3 months and speakers are drawn from our Bay Area alumni base and involved with various segments of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
