EMURGO

Emergere (verb) – Latin – to rise out or up, bring
forth, bring to light

EMURGO Global is the official commercial and venture arm of the Cardano project, registered in Tokyo since June 2017 and in Singapore since May 2018. Being a pioneer in the space of Blockchain, EMURGO enables pragmatic solutions by leveraging “3rd Generation Blockchain Technology- Cardano”. We work closely in a unique affiliation with IOHK, to promote Cardano’s adoption and growth of its ecosystem, globally by building, investing, and advising projects and organizations that adopt Cardano’s decentralized blockchain ecosystem. With a strong presence in Singapore, New York, and Indonesia; we have now recently set foot in India.

EMURGO Global is a pioneer in the space of Blockchain, enables pragmatic solutions by leveraging “3rd Generation Blockchain Technology- Cardano”. Works closely in a unique affiliation with IOHK, to promote Cardano’s adoption and growth of its eco-system, globally.

Emurgo drives the adoption of Cardano by building, investing, and advising projects and organizations that adopt Cardano’s decentralized blockchain ecosystem.

EMURGO Academy is a Global Blockchain Learning Solutions entity of EMURGO Global established in Jan 2019 to focus on incubation, Training and evangelising Blockchain to foster deep fundamental understanding of blockchain technology and thus establish an education program to drive practical usage of blockchain technology around the globe.

Education and Training have always been the most important tools for transformation and empowerment. EMURGO Academy will skill students, developers, industries & institutions to create blockchain experts, drive the adoption of blockchain ecosystem globally and bridge the gap in demand for skilled Blockchain developers.

Our team

Ken Kodama

Global Chief Executive Officer

Ken Kodama

Global Chief Executive Officer

In 2014, Kodama started his career as a certified financial planner and provided life planning consultation and financial products. That year, he saw a great potential in Bitcoin and began promoting cryptocurrency. He then embarked on the Cardano project with Michael Parsons and Charles Hoskinson, working on business development and promotion. Kodama founded and became CEO of EMURGO in 2017. He has a wide range of relationships with both domestic and international entrepreneurs and blockchain experts.

Manmeet Singh

Global CIO & CFO

Manmeet Singh

Global CIO & CFO

As Chief Financial and Investment Officer at EMURGO, the official commercial and venture arm of Cardano, Manmeet spearheads its global strategy focusing on building the accelerator, education and investment units of EMURGO. As a tech geek, he went from an interest in blockchain and its worldwide impact to actually running, mentoring and investing in blockchain businesses. Manmeet now holds a number of active positions in the blockchain space: he is Council Member of the Cardano Foundation, Founding Member of Blockchain for Europe, Co-Founder of Y2X, Advisory Board Member at Bloq as well as Managing Partner of his private fund, Blockseed Ventures. He also is Managing Director at EMURGO & SOSV’s newly launched dLab blockchain accelerator.

E Venkatesan

CEO, EMURGO Academy

E Venkatesan

CEO, EMURGO Academy

EV has 2 decades of experience in Education / Skill Development and Consulting Business. His longest career stint was at NIIT Ltd and rose to become their Vice-President, assuming key strategic responsibilities including Head of Sales for India Business. EV also had a brief tenure as Business Head at an Edu-Tech start-up in Bangalore and was the Sourcing Head for India for HCL TalentCare, a Skill Development venture of HCL Corporation. Prior to Emurgo, EV was one of the founding member of an Ed-Tech Start up. He holds Computer Science degree from Bharathidasan University and is certified in Tracking Organisational Performance by IIM, Ahmedabad.

Nico

CTO

Nico

CTO

Previous to working at EMURGO, Nicolás Arqueros was CEO and founder of one of the top app development companies in Chile. Within less than three years the company generated income over $1M and produced over 40 different projects. Additionally, he worked as a senior engineer for various Silicon Valley startups before joining EMURGO as an Entrepreneur in Residence.

Florian

CMO

Florian

CMO

Florian has been in Asia’s startup scene since 2010, with a personal mission to leverage technology to improve environmental and social conditions globally. He led the international business of bike sharing Unicorn Mobike, acquired for USD 3.7 billion in April 2018.

Narender Balachandran

Vice President, EMURGO Academy

Narender Balachandran

Vice President, EMURGO Academy

Narender is an engineer by education, an entrepreneur by mindset and in the education industry by choice. Narender started his career at Sutherland Global and was the Director, Strategic Alliances at TalentSprint. He has also held the position of Regional Manager, Sales at The Princeton Review, Territory Head @ NIIT Ltd and The National Sales Head at HCL TalentCare. Deeply passionate about bridging the talent gap in India, he has played an instrumental role in sourcing talented candidates and has groomed them to become industry-ready professionals. Narender is an alumnus of Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology and Research Academy.

Vijay Balaji Elango

Vice President – EMURGO Academy

Vijay Balaji Elango

Vice President – EMURGO Academy

Vijay has 12+ years of experience in Marketing, Sales, Operations, Business Intelligence, Training and Recruitment.

He started his career with NIIT from being as Senior Management Trainee and handled multiple roles and last role held was that of Territory Head. He has worked with other companies like Jet King as Regional Head South, HCL TalentCare as South and East India Head and Country Head in an Edu-Tech Startup as his last assignment before joining EMURGO. He has recorded the highest revenue in all his previous roles with NIIT and HCL and has been a Strategic Business Solution person with awards such as Unstoppable and Highest Contributor of the Year.

He currently heads the Strategic Alliances division of EMURGO for India and with the mission to associate with Country’s most prestigious Institutions to bring Blockchain Technology to the Students and create Domain experts from the student community to match the demand in this technology.

He is an Engineer in Computer Science and an MBA from BIM – Bharathidasan Institute of Management.

Bharat Mallapur

Vice President-Tech, EMURGO Academy

Bharat Mallapur

Vice President-Tech, EMURGO Academy

Bharat is a Computer Engineer with 14+ years of software experience and an expert in Blockchain. He has been part of leading product development companies such as Analog Devices, MediaTek and SONY and has experience in building development teams from scratch. He was co-founder of a startup in the IIoT space with blockchain as an underlying trust/audit layer. He has been a blockchain consultant helping companies deliver blockchain MVPs to their clients. He is also passionate about sharing his knowledge in the blockchain space by organizing meetups on Hyperledger and Ethereum. Bharat is an alumnus of Institution of Engineers.

Shagun Bahadur

Senior Manager, EMURGO Academy

Shagun Bahadur

Senior Manager, EMURGO Academy

Shagun is a skill development professional with over 12 years of experience in managing large scale end to end operations in Corporate Training, Skills development and CSR space for large BFSI institutions like Bombay Stock Exchange Institute and IL&FS Skills Development Corporation. She is a Post Graduate in Business Administration and an Alumnus of Symbiosis.

Takahiro Hoshi

ICO Consultant

Takahiro Hoshi

ICO Consultant

After graduating Vancouver Island University, Takahiro joined NTT Data Getronics, a subsidiary to the biggest IT company in Japan, and Recruit, Japan’s biggest HR and lifestyle media company. He’s been engaged in developing new products and services through vast coverage of professions ranging from product development, business development, and sales and marketing.

Sebastien Guillemot

R&D Engineering Lead

Sebastien Guillemot

R&D Engineering Lead

Graduating with an Honors in computer science and a minor in mathematics, Sebastien worked as a software engineer at Microsoft before becoming interested in the research and development of Cardano. Sebastien joined Emurgo where he now works on R&D and education.

Ravi Shankar

Advisor

Ravi Shankar

Advisor

Having worked across the industry over 35 years, from founding a company (Lister Technologies), to heading HR for Deutsche Software Limited, incubating HCL Talent Care as Chief Human Resources Officer, Mindtree as their Chief People Officer, HCL Technologies as their Global Head of Talent Management, Ravi has been able to pave a path of positive change for the way HR works with pioneering efforts in space of corporate social networks to digitizing HR by using AI, BOTS & Voice, gamifications and Analytics.

Sathish Aravind

AGM – Marketing at EMURGO Academy India

Sathish Aravind

AGM – Marketing at EMURGO Academy India

Sathish is a passionate Marketeer and a smart generalist. He has vast experience in conceptualizing and executing Pan India Consumer campaigns, Seasonal Campaigns and other Branding activities.Has also hands on experience in digital marketing – SEM,SEO,Performance marketing, Branding, etc

He started his career in TAFE as Brand Manager and has worked in top companies like HDFC and Infosys in analytics and marketing roles

He then co- founded a start-up known as CelebratON.in in December 2017. CelebratON.in is an online event essentials aggregator which brings together all the essential services for celebrations under a single roof and headed the Marketing and Operations

He is an MBA graduate from BIM, Trichy, India and has done his B.E. from Madras Institute of Technology, Anna University.

Shri Raghu Raaman Thiyagharajan

AGM – Tech Evangelist at EMURGO Academy India

Shri Raghu Raaman Thiyagharajan

AGM – Tech Evangelist at EMURGO Academy India

Raghu is a blockchain architect, developer and a passionate trainer. He has real time experience in building decentralized blockchain applications using Solidity, Hyperledger, ReactJS, NodeJS, Web3 JS, Next JS, Bootstrap, Material- UI, Ant Design, MeteorJS, Ruby and GoLang. He has been evangelising for more than 18 months as blockchain developer and has trained multiple professionals and developers on blockchain use-cases and development.

He started his career at Cognizant and has worked in top companies like Standard Chartered and Barclays. He also happened to co- found start-up known as CelebratON.in in December 2017. CelebratON.in is an online event essentials aggregator which brings together all the essential services for celebrations under a single roof.

He has done various Blockchain Certifications. Few of them are – IBM Blockchain Foundation Developer (By Cognitive Class, IBM), Blockchain Architecture Design and Use Cases (By NPTEL, IIT Kharagpur) and Introduction to Digital Currencies (By University of Nicosia). He is a certified Ethereum & Solidity Programmer as well.
He is an MBA graduate from BIM, Trichy, India and has done his B.E. from Jeppiaar Engineering College

Siddhartha

Advisor & Director

Siddhartha

Advisor & Director

Siddhartha has held executive leadership and board positions in Financial Services operations and technology. He has worked as part of joint ventures with Deutsche Bank and State Street, latter being in the role of the CEO setting up and managing Custody and Fund Admin operations. He has also served as Chairperson of the Board of an FCA regulated insurance administrator in UK. In these roles, he has worked on using technology to eliminate the trade-off between efficiency and risk management. In early 2018, Siddhartha set-up Intain Technologies, with focus on combining AI and Blockchain to address the same issue of risk and efficiency balance in financial services.

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