Name : Rahm Shastry
Designation : Founder
Company Name : Astute Solar
Powerconnect Topic: NIT Investors Club for Entrepreneurship (NICE)
Abstract: Over the past year, several NIT alumni have made seed investments at companies founded by other NIT alumni. For example, FutureNow Innosoft (founded by NITW alumni, which has developed CampusAdmin and AceNetcampus) and TaxiForSure (founded by NITK alumni, which aggregates taxi service in India). Several alumni have approached us to establish a NIT investment club that would allow a platform for prospective alumni-investors to evaluate and invest in an alumni-founded-startup. In this session, we will discuss this topic to put together a framework on the operational aspect of such a club.
BIO:
Rahm has over 25+ years of engineering, marketing, sales and executive-level leadership in several Silicon Valley semiconductor, computer and related software companies. Prior to founding Polaris, Rahm was the Global Accounts Director at Magma. Prior to Magma, Rahm was the CEO of IRIS Technologies, whose assets was acquired by Polaris in 2012. As VP of Business Development at ZeroSoft, Rahm was instrumental for its acquisition by Synopsys in 2010. In 2009, as a Board Member of PwrLite, Rahm facilitated its acquisition by Xilinx. Earlier Rahm was the CEO at Nascentric, Inc., a software simulation company which was acquired by Cadence in 2009. Between 2003 and 2006, Rahm was the CEO of Tharas Systems, Inc. which was acquired by EVE, Inc. Prior to Tharas, Rahm held management roles at Cadence, Viewlogic, Apollo Computer (now part of HP) and Standard Microsystems Corp. Rahm received an MSEE from SUNY, Stony Brook in 1982 and a B.Tech in Electronics & Communications from National Institute of Technology, Surathkal (India) in 1980.
Rahm is passionate about renewable energy. In 2010, he started Astute Solar to develop both commercial and non-profit solar PV projects. With respect to charitable project undertaking, he is involved with developing off-grid solar PV for schools, hospitals and orphanages in India. In 2011, Astute Solar in conjunction with TUV, SolarForPeace and Yieldopia installed 30KW of off-grid power projects at 11 schools. In 2012, Astute Solar plans to install an additional 35KW of charitable solar plants in India.