– 36 year technology industry veteran
– Serial enterprise business builder
– Strategic C-suite confidante and advisor
– Incubator Ecosystem Facilitator and Advisor
Between Cognizant and TCS, Rao has spent 36 years incubating and growing multiple billion dollar technology and consulting businesses, primarily in financial services. He has specialized in the Business – IT strategy and the management of large and complex solutions in the US, UK, Continental Europe and India covering a wide spectrum across private/commercial banking, capital market, insurance, and asset servicing. In these multi-faceted roles, he has successfully delivered platforms with lasting impact both to the banking clients as well as technology vendors and servicers.
Throughout his career, he has been keen on creating ecosystems of innovation by bringing together consultants, technology providers, and clients to identify specific pain points and leveraging appropriate technologies to create sustainable solutions, while simultaneously enabling disparate partners to create differentiating “secret sauces” to scale the value chains in their respective competitive areas.
Now, as an independent investor and advisor, Rao’s interests lies in creating execution capability and scale for promising ideas and entrepreneurs by bringing them into an ecosystem of labs, accelerators, and incubators working on cutting edge technologies with 15-20 years of potential enterprise impact. By leveraging a vast network of seasoned technology professionals, potential lighthouse clients and investors, his objective is to bring an enterprise level of oversight and operating discipline to the startup community.
He currently has close working relationships with Naya Ventures, TOPXIGHT LABS, and two New York and Silicon Valley based start-ups, which have a unique strategic vision and depth in creating cross industry intellectual property in data sciences, machine learning, immersive AR/VR business systems, and global block chain-enabled business communities.
