Drawing on twenty years of experience leading and advising entrepreneurial companies as well as non-profits, and as an entrepreneurial executive in the Silicon Valley and the Asia Pacific, Sanjay Dani brings business savvy, a deep understanding of global technological shifts, and new venture leadership experience to his role as CEO of Serra Power Solutions.
With first-hand understanding of the pressing need in India for predictable and cost-effective energy, Sanjay believes that privately owned, distributed power will significantly improve global competitiveness and profitability of Indian businesses.
Observing that US and European clean-tech ventures rarely innovate their business models in order to serve such global growth segments effectively, Sanjay founded Serra Power to address this need by providing fully-integrated power solutions that cut down on spiraling energy costs and improve reliability.
His first venture, Web Professionals, was a pioneering web hosting company founded at the early onset of the Internet boom in mid-1990s. He joined iAsiaWorks, a pan-Asian data center company, through acquisition where he co-led its NASDAQ IPO. Sanjay began his career as a software architect at Sun Microsystems after graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Sanjay has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology (formerly IT-BHU) and a Master’s degree as a Sloan Fellow from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
Andreas Fornwald has 20 years of experience in power plant design, commissioning, operations and energy equipment sales in international markets at ABB and Siemens, where he also led project development and sales teams, oversaw business development from Finland to Chile and led growth in emerging economies.
A key advisor since Serra Power’s inception, Andreas strongly believes in the future of solar energy as one of the world’s most scalable energy sources, both upward and downward, which is also very reliable.
This belief reinforces Serra Power’s focus on commercial scale, captive solar plants as a power solution that is not only as economically attractive as it is at multi-megawatt utility scale but is also a distributive stabilizer for power grids.
Part of the new breed of global managers, Andreas brings to our Board of Advisors intercultural business acumen, strategic thinking to stay ahead of global trends, growth leadership and authority in power technology. He is fluent in English, Russian, German, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, and French. He has lived, studied, and worked in Eastern and Western Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, North Africa, and the USA. He is currently the CEO at a German subsidiary of a global power distribution corporation where he has successfully re-vitalized the management team and increased revenue dramatically.
Andreas holds an Electrical Engineering degree from Fachhochschule Osnabrück and a MS in Electrical Engineering from Universitatea „Politehnica” din București as well as a European Union patent in DC /DC invertors. He also holds a Masters of Science from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where he was a Sloan Fellow.
Mukund Muley brings to the Serra Power team over twenty years of entrepreneurial and management experience in industrial automation. He is the Managing Director of Pune, India-based Cotmac Electronics Pvt. Ltd., which he co-founded in partnership with the Cotmac Group of Companies in 1991.
Cotmac Electronics is India’s largest System Integrator in industrial automation and employs over 400 people globally. In addition to establishing a significant market share in automation of India’s textile, steel, chemical and petrochemicals industries, Mukund has led diversification of Cotmac Electronics into Information Technology, Telecommunications and Building Management Systems. Under Mukund’s leadership, Cotmac Electronics has established presence in Dubai, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, USA and Canada through international operations and joint ventures.
Mukund is a firm believer in the potential of solar energy to meet growing power needs of the Indian industry and also in the crucial role that power electronics will continue to play in improving efficiency and utilization of captive solar power.
Mukund holds an Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering degree from the College of Engineering, Pune and is a recipient of the 2010 Engineering Excellence Award from Indira Institute of Management and Technology. He began his career at Phillips India. Mukund started his first venture in 1988, and thus was a pioneer in the manufacturing of inverters and uninterruptible power supplies in India.
Vikram is dedicated to championing entrepreneurship in the energy industry and sustainable growth in clean energy in particular. He has nine years of investment and management experience in the energy industry. Recently, he was Director of Commercial Strategies with Edison Mission Energy, a Fortune 200 firm, where he had P&L responsibility for the U.S.’s fifth largest clean-energy generation portfolio. He also worked in Edison’s corporate development team to lay out Edison’s long-term growth strategy in conventional and clean-energy businesses. Previously, as a consultant with Charles River Associates, he advised energy companies and infrastructure funds on multi-billion dollar investments and helped energy clients position their businesses competitively.
Vikram received a dual graduate degree in Energy Economics from Colorado School of Mines and Ecole du Pétrole et des Moteurs (IFP School, France). He is currently a Sloan Fellow at Stanford Graduate School of Business where he will graduate in General Management. Vikram’s dedication to energy industry is partly spurred by his early life experience growing up in an economically challenged region of India where electricity was a significant bottleneck.