7Avenues - About Us

7Avenues is run by a core team of founding investors who play key executive roles. Our wealth is tied to the success of 7Avenues and to the success of our investors.

Shankar AVSB, our CEO, comes with experience in commercializing new technologies and services, with executive level experience in TMT and Energy sectors, including Project Finance and M&A, and has worked with industry leaders like ABB, Infosys, BP, Fidelity and Citigroup. He is also the CEO of MyOrbit, a 7Avenues group company. Business owners worldwide have benefited from his inputs, and his views have also featured in Harvard Business Review. He is an alumnus of NIT Jaipur, IIM Lucknow, and has also studied at Stanford University.

Sandeep Saxena, our Managing Director, and CEO of 7to9 Retail and Big India Farms, comes with a rich experience in retail operations, and sales and marketing of both consumer products and complex services. He has worked with leading companies like Indian Oil, Infosys, Cogizant, Amex, Franklin Templeton in senior positions. Sandeep emphasizes constant innovation, and has indepth understanding of retail, supply chain, real estate and financial industries and is a coach for the entire team. He is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and IIM Lucknow.

Pankaj Lal is a key member-investor of 7Avenues, and is the COO of 7to9 Retail, where he is leading retail operations to achieve growth along with profitability. He brings extensive operations and people management experience from different industries, and has experience in implementing systems, processes and supply chain for large scale growth. He has successfully improved business profitability through ERP and better processes. Pankaj leads from the front and mentors every team member. He is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA.

Sanket Mehta is a key executive of 7Avenues, and works with our members worldwide to ensures that all have the necessary information for their roles, and also manages our finance and shareholder information. Sanket comes with strong analytical and planning ability, which is a big asset for us. He leads our Investor Services, and is also the VP Business Planning for 7to9 Retail. He is an alumnus of IIT Bombay.

Gourav Khabya is a key executive of 7Avenues. He is currently playing the role of VP Marketing & Customer Service for 7to9 Retail, along with leading our logistics operations. He has rich experience in marketing and customer relationships. Gourav is an alumnus of IIT Bombay.

Nitish Bandi is leading the operations of Big India Farms, our Food Supply Chain business. Nitish has is a hands on person who can execute projects from concept to completion. He is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur.

Parshu A is a key member of our new ventures group. He is a private equity executive with rich experience in fund raising and investor relationships. He is an alumnus of IIT Bombay and Carnegie Mellon University.

Sairam T is a key member of our new ventures group and Investor Relations team. He is also an advisor on business processes and metrics. He is an alumnus of IIM Lucknow.

Ranjit Patnaik is an investor and business advisor to our new ventures team. He has brought success to both start-ups and large companies. Before starting his own company, he worked with Irevna as Head of Large Client Engagement, managing 50+ MBAs and CAs and rapidly growing the KPO services through his understanding of Wall Street. He is an alumnus of NIT Jaipur and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Sandeep B is an early member-investor of 7Avenues based in the Asia-Pacific region. He has experience in banking and financial services. He is an alumnus of Delhi University and IIM Bangalore.

Srinagesh T is key investor and business advisor to us, with extensive CXO level experience in project finance and M&A. He is currently running his own Real Estate Investment fund. He is an alumnus of IIT Madras and IIM Bangalore.

Achal Mehra is a business partner with over 18 years of industry experience in CXO positions. He has extensive business network worldwide that is helpful in our foreign business plans. He is an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad.

7Avenues today has 160+ member-investors worldwide with many more interested in our ventures to gain the promoter-like benefits which one can not achieve through publicly traded stocks. We invite new members to join us where our investment objectives match. Our group includes professionals from reputed organizations and several self-made businessmen. We value their ideas and spirit of entrepreneurship.

How we started: In October 2004, four of us were wondering to use our corporate experience to build a world class a retail chain in India - where we can negotiate with the big companies to bring the best deals for our retail customers. We had to start somewhere, and withdrew whatever we could from our personal bank accounts, and started 7to9 Retail Stores. The first steps were taken at a small scale but it worked.

By Q1 2005, we realized its better to have a holding company through which all interested member-investors can invest in 7to9 Retail and other new ventures we wanted to start. Thus by Q2 2005, 7Avenues became the holding company for all our ventures, bringing together all our capital, talent, and global business networks. You can see our portfolio here.

With 7to9 Retail, our first and major venture, we have grown from 1 Supermarket Store in Q1 2005 to about 15 stores today (store numbers change once in a while as we close weaker stores and ramp-up high-performers), and we are scaling up to reach 100 Supermarket Stores by 2010. We have a few more ventures with good potential, and a few new investment opportunities in the pipeline. Today, we have both (a) pure brick & mortar businesses like Retail Supermarkets, Food Supply Chain and Farms and (b) Online business involving Internet and Online Services.

So, from a modest beginning in 2005, we have seen a growing demand for our ventures and business approach. But our core values -- creating wealth for everyone, transparency, and driving a change -- remain the same.